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Book .DQS/Sfl 
Copyright N° 

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MEMOIRS 



MME. DESBORDES-VALMORE. 



"Sweet Spirit with the Golden Voice." — Brizeux. 

" The most courageous, tender, and compassionate of 
feminine souls — site whom I do not hesitate to call the 
Mater Dolorosa of poetry" — Sainte-Beuve. 



* 

Memoirs 

OF 

Madame Desbordes -Valmore. 

BY THE LATE 

C. A.' SAINTE-BEUVE. 

WITH A SELECTION FROM HER POEMS. 

TRANSLATED BY HARRIET W. PRESTON. 



/ 




BOSTON:,'. 
ROBERTS BROTHERS. 
1873. 



^&>' 



y& 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1372, by 

ROBERTS BROTHERS, 

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



LC Control Number 
III 



tmp96 031341 



CAMBRIDGE ! 
OF JOHN WILSON AND SON. 



PREFACE. 



-►& 



This informal but most tender sketch of a gifted 
woman, little known among us, is also affecting 
as a memorial of the lamented biographer. 

I think there must be many who feel with me, 
that when the refined spirit of M. Sainte-Beuve 
passed away from this world, his loss fell with 
especial heaviness upon the women in it. For 
he, and I had almost said he alone, did them 
and their work that perfect justice which neither 
extenuates nor sets down in malice ; neither exag- 
gerates the actual nor requires the impossible. 
In a time of much blatant outcry, of rude and 
inquisitive attacks upon woman's rightful reserve, 
of wild claims on what is thought to be her 
behalf, both loudly made and loudly repelled, and 
all tending to an inevitable cheapening of her 



vi PREFACE. 



name and efforts, — this one man united the chiv- 
alry of the old time to the critical spirit of the 
new. He never compromised his own dignity 
in seeking to portray a woman, and he never 
wounded hers ; but, by virtue of a deep and 
always delicate sympathy, he fathomed what is 
foolishly called the "mystery" of her nature ; and 
told, in all carefulness and charity, the complex 
and unsymmetrical truth. 

If the knightly soul that was in him seemed 
sometimes to exaggerate the purely literary value 
of what a woman had done, it was partly because 
he realized better than another her obstacles and 
limitations. But he also taught the world that 
the highest order of critical ability sometimes dis- 
covers beauties where the next can do no more than 
smartly signalize defects ; and it is certain that, like 
the grace of God himself, his goodness made one 
humble. I do not see how it is possible for a 
thoughtful and aspiring — I will not say ambi- 
tious — girl to close the perusal of one of 
M. Sainte-Beuvc's later "Portraits de Femmes," 
without feeling rise to her very lips some such 



PREFACE. Vll 



confession as this : " Our efforts have been frag- 
mentary in the past, our aims low or unstable, 
our achievements poor ; but here I see gently 
presented, a new ideal of modest and conscien- 
tious work, and feel encouraged to encounter 
its immense and hitherto unthought-of difficul- 
ties." 

I hope, therefore, that some, to whom the name 
of Mine. Desbordes-Valinore is not very familiar, 
will be won to the story of her life, by the fact 
that it was the last memorial of a woman, prepared 
by the respectful hand of the kind master who is 
gone; and that, beginning thus, they will pres- 
ently learn to love the subject of the memoir 
herself, for the graces of her mind and character, 
and the overwhelming sorrows that she endured. 

In making a selection from her poems, I have 
been guided chiefly by a desire to illustrate the 
vicissitudes of her life and the full compass of her 
mnsical tones ; but I hope also that I have not 
unfairly represented, save by the necessary inade- 
quacy of my translation, the general quality of 
her talent. 



PREFACE. 



I have ventured to omit from my translation 
of the memoir several rather long notes, by 
M. Sainte-Beuve's posthumous editor. They arc 
full of interest for Frenchmen, but would, I 
thought, be confusing and even tiresome to Ameri- 
can readers, by reason of their very abundance 
of proper names and personal details. Every 
note from the author's own hand I have carefully 
retained and rendered. 

Harriet W. Preston. 
Danvebs. Nov. 26, 1S72. 



MEMOIRS 



MME. DESBORDES-VALMORE. 



' I ^HE English have an admirable way of 
paying a last tribute to their eminent 
or pleasing poets. Immediately on the 
death of such, they arrange and publish 
extracts from their writings, private papers, 
letters written and received ; and the result 
is a distinct and truthful likeness. Thus 
the sister of that gentle and affectionate 
poetess, Felicia Hemans, published in 1840 
a memoir of the life and writings of the 
latter. The kindness and confidence of 
MM. Valmore, father and son, 1 have en- 

1 When the last of the ensuing articles had appeared, M. 
Sainte-Beuve expressed his obligations to the elder M. Valmore 
in the following terms : — " May 6, 1869, I have to thank you, 
1 



MEMOIRS OF 



ablcd me to examine the private family 
treasure which they have piously preserved 
and set in order, in the papers, notes, and 
correspondence of another tender and impas- 
sioned poetess, Mme. Desbordes-Valmore, 
— one who united an exquisite moral sen- 
sibility to a thrilling gift of song, or rather 
with whom sensibility and the gift of song 
were one. Her verses are doubtless the 
expression of her life : in them she is re- 
flected in hues both warm and bright ; they 
ring with her cries of love and grief. Yet 
it has seemed to me, after a cursory exam- 



my dear sir, for having procured me the opportunity and the 
means thus to present an interior view of this charming and 
pathetic figure. Very few families have, like yours, that dig- 
nified and noble habit of thought and feeling which makes the 
greatest glory of a beloved member to consist in the fullest 
revelation of the truth. You and your excellent sun seem to me 
models in this respect, — such as I have not encountered twice 
in my career as a literary and biographical critic. I hope the 
public will reward you by the fonder admiration it shall 
award, — nay, has already awarded to one who Mas unique 
both as a woman and a poet. 1 am, with the most affectionate 
respect, yours, 

" S u \ 1 1 l'> i r \ i . ' ' 



MME. DESBORDES-VALMORE. 3 

ination of these manuscript remains, that 
there is room to illustrate more fully, not 
the poet, but the woman ; and that she 
would lose nothing by being closely followed 
through the complications of her career, 
her every-day work, and the peculiarly af- 
fecting trials of her actual existence. At 
present I can but give an idea, and, as it 
were, present an abridgment of the book 
that might be made. But it seems to me 
that a sketch of that life — so refined, so 
generous, and so sorely tried — must be not 
only deeply interesting but actually consol- 
ing to many another equally harassed 
spirit, toward whom fate has been perpetu- 
ally chilling and unkind. I would prepare 
a manual for all who have the artist's sus- 
ceptibility, more especially for women with 
hearts both soft and proud, barely coura- 
geous, that suffer unmercifully and bleed to 
the very last, but never despair. 



M/C.UO/AS OF 



Marceline - Felicite - Josephe Desbordes, 
who died in Paris, June 23, 1859, was born 
at Douai, June 20, 1786, No. 32 Eue Notre 
Dame, — now 36 Eue de Valenciennes. 
Her father was an heraldic painter. Her 
uncle, Constant Desbordes, was, in the 
fullest sense of the word, a good portrait 
painter, a friend of Gerard, and highly es- 
teemed by M. de Forbin. He attained suc- 
cess in the exhibitions. A portrait which 
he painted of his brother was presented by 
Mme. Valmore to the museum of her native 
town. There were great-uncles of the name 
of Desbordes, — wealthy and long-estab- 
lished booksellers in Holland, who had re- 
mained Protestant, and who seem to have 
proposed that their Douai relatives should 
succeed them in business, provided their 
children might be educated in the Protes- 
tant faith, which had been that of their com- 
mon ancestors before the revocation of the 



MME. DESBORDES-VALMORE. 5 

edict of Nantes. The offer was refused. 
A profound Catholic piety prevailed in the 
humble house on the Rue Notre Dame. 
The family was rather numerous, — three 
daughters and a son. Reminiscences of that 
earliest period of childhood will one day 
revive under the pen of little Marceline, 
the youngest and most gifted of the family. 
There remained with her a kind of glorified 
vision of her babyhood, of the beauty and 
caresses of her mother, the care of her el- 
dest sister, and of that first domestic happi- 
ness too early shattered. The Revolution, 
as may well be imagined, ruined the trade 
of an armorial painter, and it became neces- 
sary to seek some other means of subsist- 
ence. Among the far-away memories, which, 
at a later period, seized so powerfully upon 
the imagination of Mme. Valmore, there 
were evidently some which assumed in their 
vagueness a kind of legendary character. 



MEMOIRS OE 



I shall leave her to relate them in her own 
sweet and graceful fashion ; although ex- 
act criticism might here mid it necessary to 
make corrections or at least require expla- 
nations. It is certain, however, that some- 
where about 1799, little Marceline accom- 
panied her mother to Guadeloupe, where 
they counted on finding a relative w 7 ho had 
there amassed a fortune. They arrived, 
however, to find the country in a blaze of 
revolt, the yellow-fever raging, and their 
relative dead ; and there the mother of 
Mile. Desbordes herself died of the epi- 
demic. The child was received by the wife 
of a ship-owner from Nantes, whose name 
has been preserved, — Mme. Geudon. Her 
husband engaged passage for Marceline on 
a vessel bound for France. The story they 
tell of Joseph Vernet was re-enacted during 
her passage, — without a thought of imita- 
tion on her part. The ship having encoun- 



MME. DESBORDES-VALMORE. 7 

tered a violent storm, it was found impossible 
to persuade the child to go below. The 
sailors who had become attached to her, tied 
her among the shrouds, and thence she wit- 
nessed the conflict. In the fragile mould 
of her fourteen years, her artist nature re- 
vealed itself. By her courage, her modesty, 
and her forlorn situation, she had interested 
everyone on board except the captain, — a 
brutal man, whom she had interested too 
strongly in another fashion. Unable to ac- 
complish his purpose, he resolved to extort 
what he could, and when they landed at 
Dunkirk, he retained the orphan's poor 
little trunk, containing her scanty ward- 
robe, on pretence of reimbursing himself 
for the price of her passage, which the un- 
fortunate child had been unable to pay. 
Thus did life present to her from its outset 
a cruel and unrighteous aspect. She found 
her family in the utmost destitution ; and 



MEMOIRS OF 



then it was that, after long hesitation, she 
resigned herself to the stage. 

She began at the theatre of Lille, with 
every thing to learn. By dint of studious 
nights, close economy, and many privations, 
she passed the ordeal. She was overtaxed. 
but gave way only in secret. One day she 
dropped in a swoon upon her own staircase, 
after too long a fast, and was taken up by a 
friend and neighbor who had been startled 
by the noise of her fall. She contracted at 
this time a habit of suffering which -refined 
and softened her talent in the end, but 
passed irremediably into her life. 

Mile. Desbordes was now engaged at the 
Theatre des Arts at Rouen, to play the 
simple and innocent parts (ingemtites), in 
which she succeeded admirably, for she was 
ingenuousness itself. Never having been at 
any school or conservatory she had acquired 
no mannerism, no little artificial airs, and 



MME. DESBORDES-VALMORE. 



merely obeyed the dictates of her own line 
and simple nature. There was observable 
in her delivery a great naturalness of inflec- 
tion, which rendered* her meaning transpar- 
ently clear, and the comic passages in par- 
ticular very effective. She was observed at 
Rouen by certain actors from the Comic 
Opera at Paris, who were there to give a 
few performances, and who, on their return, 
spoke of her to Gretry in such a manner 
that the good-natured master undertook the 
charge of her musical education. From his 
own observations he soon came to take a 
really fatherly interest in her ; and, touched 
by her noble but sad expression, he called 
her " a little dethroned queen/' Under his 
auspices she made her debut at the Opera 
Comique, in one of his own pieces, her part 
being that of Lisbeth in the opera of the 
same name, and she made a favorable im- 
pression. A little later M. Jars, whom we 



.UL'J/O/A'S OF 



afterwards knew as deputy of the lihoiie, 
but whose first attempts were in the way of 
light literature, gave her the part of Julie in 
the opera of " Julie ou le Pot de Fleurs," the 
music of which was by Spontini. She had 
a thrilling, sympathetic voice, and Elleviou 
Martin and Gavaudan, who came to wit- 
ness her first appearance, heard her with 
tears. The " Journal des Debars," for 
March 16, 1805, in a notice of her second 
appearance in the part of Julie, praised 
her warmly. The article must have been 
by Geoffroy, and says : — 

"The two principal parts are perfectly played, 
the officer by Elleviou, whose grace and vivacity 
are well known ; the niece by Mile. Desbordes, 
with whose talent I was unacquainted. This young 
debutante had escaped my notice, but she does 
not deserve such indifference. After Mile. Mars, 
she is unsurpassed and hardly equalled in simple 
characters. She is not silly as the innocents in 
other theatres are apt to be, but only frank and 



-*T* 



►£< 



MME. DESBORDES-VALMORE. II 

artless. She has a correct and delicate accent, 
and carries herself with great ease and a native 
simplicity ; — admirable qualities these, but al- 
most buried in this theatre, for, though Mile. 
Desbordes plays and recites finely, she has no 
voice for singing. The musicians must renounce 
in her favor their science and their harmonies. 
The orchestra must retire and make itself naught. 
Little vaudevilles might be composed expressly for 
her which would be decidedly more agreeable than 
those grand arias, equally fatiguing to the audi- 
ence and the cantatrice" 

She possessed all manner of rare and re- 
fined, qualities ; yet one may see from this 
very eulogism that there was a slight lack 
of physical power, of that material stuff 
which is an essential accompaniment of 
such qualities, which carries them off, as 
one may say, and sets them in relief. We 
find on examination still other testimonials, 
giving a most flattering idea of her talent in 
pathetic or impassioned parts. Thus, later, 



MEMOIRS OF 



in 1813 or 1815, she played at the Odeon 
the part of Evelina in one of Rigaud's 



dramas ; and the " Mercure 
her in. terms like these : — 



commended 



" Mile. Desbordes makes an agreeable Evelina. 
She is extremely intelligent, and her carriage is 
perfect. She might serve as a model to more 
than one actress at the Theatre Francais. Her 
talent is closely related to that of Mile. Desgar- 
cins, whom she frequently recalls. Her voice, 
too, is sweet, — winning, and yet strong. . . ." 

The misfortune of Mile. Desbordes as an 
actress was the vagrant life which necessity 
imposed upon her. She was condemned to 
be for ever making her debut. After her 
first success at the Opera Comique, money 
difficulties and her father's interest com- 
pelled her to sacrifice the future to the 
present, and to accept an engagement at 
Brussels, where she took the part of first 
young lady in comedy, and of young l)u- 



MME. DESBORDES-VALMORE. 13 

gazon 1 ill opera. Subsequently she re- 
turned to the theatre of Rouen, where she 
played first young lady only, and was always 
warmly welcomed and appreciated by the 
public, but her singing days were over. 
" At twenty," she says, " my private griefs 
compelled me to give up singing, for the 
sound of my own voice made me weep. 
But the music reverberated in my aching 
brain, and my thoughts involuntarily ar- 
ranged themselves in harmonious numbers." 
Music was beginning to turn to poetry 
within her, and so it came to pass, that the 
elegy one day blossomed upon her lips. 

Summoned to the Odeon in 1813, she first 
appeared, March 27, in the part of Claudine 
in a piece of Pigault-Lebrun's, " Claudine 
and Florian." Here she achieved a marked 
success in several parts, and particularly in 

1 The part of an artless, merry, and innocent girl, so called 
from the famous comedienne Mile. Dugazon, who was in her 
prime at the outbreak of the great Revolution. (Tr.) 



H 



MEMi >//iS OF 



that of Eulalie in "Misanthropy and Re- 
pentance." So many tears were shed over 
her performance that one day a wicked wit, 
who had heard tell of this tearful and irre- 
sistible triumph, and who attributed it to 
the infatuation of the public, solemnly took 
his seat in the balcony and ostentatiously 
spread out upon the railing a couple of 
white handkerchiefs, in order to staunch 
the floods of tears which were about to now. 
The jester was outwitted. The piece began, 
he listening at the outset with the most 
cheerful countenance in order to render his 
neighbors absurd. As the interest grew, 
there were symptoms of emotion ; and, 
finally, in the scene where Eulalie pours 
forth the anguish of her broken heart upon 
the breast of the countess, hardly a breath 
was drawn. It was no use ; a few stilled 
sighs were heard here and there about the 
hall, then sobs, — finally the face of the 



MME. DESBORDES-VALMORE. 15 

malicious critic itself changed, he put his 
handkerchiefs away, and only used them 
furtively to wipe away some genuine tears. 
Such was the power of that simple, natural 
playing, of that voice whose compass was 
so wide, its notes so tender and thrilling, 
yet whose prevailing strain of emotion did 
not preclude, upon occasion, accents of ex- 
ceeding lightness and gayety. 

In 1815 she returned to Brussels, and 
there, on the fourth of September, 1817, she 
was married to M. Valmore, who belonged 
to the same theatre as herself, and had 
become seriously and strongly attached to 
her. Her first volume of poems appeared 
in 1818. After residing for about a year in 
Paris, she and her husband were both en- 
gaged in March, 1821, for the theatre at 
Lyons, where they remained two years, at 
the expiration of which time Mme. Valmore 
finally quitted the dramatic career. A sec- 



i6 



MEMOIRS 01- 



ond and third edition of her poems (1820- 
1822) had now fixed her place in the very 
front rank of female poets. 

It had never been permitted her fully and 
satisfactorily to develop and perfect her orig- 
inal talent ; that gift, namely, of dramatic ex- 
pression which she certainly possessed in an 
extraordinary degree, but which was too 
dependent on accidental surroundings and 
physical qualities. She who, at her various 
debuts, had seen her name associated with 
that of Mile. Mars, had been obliged almost 
immediately to surrender her engagements, 
to withdraw to a distance and succeed or 
fail (which comes to about the same thing) 
outside the charmed centre, on the very 
confines of renown, — far from the com- 
mon focus of light and sound. It is given 
to poetry alone, being pure flame, to tri- 
umph over all obstacles, — misfortune, exile, 
error even, and the rebuffs of fate. 



MME. DESBORDES-VALMORE. 1 7 

Nevertheless, her theatrical career of 
twenty years could not fail of leaving deep 
and permanent traces on her character. It 
sharpened her sensibilities ; it directed her 
acute intelligence to a great variety of sub- 
jects ; she acquired by its means a faculty 
for suffering which sprang from the very 
delicacy of her mind and was fostered by 
her humility. In her day the prejudice 
against actors and actresses was far from 
surmounted : witness the scandal occasioned 
by the interment of Mile. Kaucourt. Not 
the clergy only, but the world itself, pro- 
fessed a species of reprobation, — a shade 
of anathema. Doubtless since the days of 
Adrienne Le Couvreur, female comedians 
of wit and genius had advanced a step and 
won an important point in public considera- 
tion ; they saw the best of men, but women 
did not recognize them. Not until the days 
of Eachel did the last barrier fall, and not 
2 



■*jf 



1 8 MEMOIJK 



only women of fashion, but even young girls 
of the highest rank aspire to the friendship 
of an actress. Sensitive, modest, and with- 
out reproach, Mine. Valmore was rather 
inclined to exaggerate this falseness of posi- 
tion, so conspicuously condemned and stul- 
tified in her own person. One would have 
thought to hear her that she hud lived in 
the times of Champmesle. In some of 
her first poems she gave expression to the 
painful chill which she experienced from 
this cause. She is addressing a friend who 
was untroubled by any such scruples, and 
her verses have a Racinian purity which 
renders them worthy of recall. 



"The world where you are queen was ever harsh to me : 
It never knew my heart, so proud and yet so 
Behind the lofty wall its scorn had reared aloft, 
Doomed were my earlj years to frigid misery. 

For Thalia's shrine had been m\ refuge in di 
And Hope had lured me on with promise \ ain and gay : 
Yet many a time tears I could nol repress 
Under the jester's crown made way. 



MME. DESBORDES-VALMORE. 19 

In the vain shows where wit doth win applause, 
Hushed lies the heart, and hidden : 

To please becomes the first of laws ; 
To love is aye forbidden. 

" strange caprice of the unstable crowd ! 

gracious Muse, beloved and yet despised ! 
Honors divine by night allowed, 

By day anathematized ! 

" ' Away,' I cried,, ' with this incongruous blending 

Of triumph and of shame ! 
The grievous pride to our estate descending, 

The scattered lights of fame ! ' 
So sore to feel, so languid in aspiring, 

Bearing a barb for ever in my breast, 
Wife, mother, — these sweet names in vain desiring, 

1 longed for my last rest." 

Yet we who made Mme. Valmore's ac- 
quaintance in later years found her always 
loyal to the memories and associations of 
her early life, cherishing precious friend- 
ships which that life had bequeathed to her, 
and which were among the most illustrious 
of their kind. She was intimate with that 



2 MEMOIRS OF 



great and queenly singer. Mine. Branchu 1 , 
who reigned in the days of the first empire, 
and who held that the opera had terribly 
degenerated, when the prefect of the palace 
no longer offered her his hand and court- 
eously introduced her, as Count de Eemusat 
never failed to do if she was summoned to 
play at Saint Cloud. Mme. Valmore also 
remained strongly attached to Mile. Bigotini, 
the captivating but impassioned dam 
who used to perform Nina ou la Folic par 
amour, — the Malibran of the dance. She 
was besides the devoted friend of Mile. 
Mars, — of whom we shall presently hear 
her speak, — Mile. Mars, who, outside the 
theatre, was the most sagacious, decided, and 
self-possessed of women, full of noble and 
liberal actions, although she had the name 
of being parsimonious. It was Mine. Val- 

1 Mme. Branchu (Rose Timoleone Caroline) nee Chevalier 
de Lavit at Saint Domingo. Died at Passy, ( >ct. 1 Ith. L850. 



MAIE. DESBORDES-VALMORE. 21 

more, who one day summoned all her cour- 
age, and, in the name of friendship, said to 
Mile. Mars the fatal word that the public 
was beginning to weary of her. : ' You 
must not delay. The moment is more than 
come. Tou must retire." Mile. Mars heard 
and thanked her, and showed thereby both 
good feeling and good sense. 

Of the numerous authors whose works 
she had interpreted, and whom she had 
seen and sometimes known personally, she 
retained — without presuming to pass judg- 
ment on them — a clear and just impres- 
sion ; she preserved their distinctive traits, 
and, when questioned about them, used to 
talk enchantingly. Desaugiers, who af- 
fected melancholy, and who " made haste 
to be gay for fear he should have time to 
be sad ; " M. Etienne, the dramatic author, 
who, at the close of his life, was near pass- 
ing for a distinguished citizen, and in whose 



^ 



MEMOIRS OF 



character she wondered that any one should 
see any thing remarkable, — these and many 
more she characterized finely in a single 
phrase. Sometimes of an evening, when 
there chanced to be a brief truce in the 
warfare of her life, she would recur to her 
theatrical reminiscences and tell all manner 
of pleasant stories. She had played when 
very young with that admirable actress, 
Mme. Gontier, who had long before in- 
spired a passion in M. de Florian, and who 
was herself extravagantly enamoured of that 
brilliant captain of dragoons, the author of 
many a happy jest. Mme. Gontier was 
very religious in her old age, although she 
remained a comedienne, and never came 
upon the stage without having once or twice 
made the sign of the cross in the side scenes. 
All the young actresses loved to tease her 
who had played ' ; Aunt Aurora " so to the 
life. They would gather around her as she 



* 



MME. DESBORDES-VALMORE. 23 

sat by the fire, and ask her over and over 
again the same malicious question, — " Nov/ 
is it possible, Grandma Gontier, that M. de 
Florian used to beat you 1 " And the ex- 
cellent Mother Gontier, penitent though 
she was, would deign no reply or explana- 
tion save this, pronounced in her eighteenth- 
century fashion : " Ah, but you see, my 
children, he never paid ! " A strange sort 
of morality, and more common than one 
cares to think ! Yet it is well enough to 
set 4his anecdote over against one of Flo- 
rian's fables or pastorals. 

Mme. Valmore used also to tell, with 
a mixture of fun and pathos, the following 
anecdote of that happy time of youth and 
poverty, when one may say with truth, even 
of a woman : " Dans un grenier qu'on est 
bien a vingt ans ! " She was playing at 
the Ocleon, and lodging, I think, in the 
same street, in a very small apartment un- 



2 4 



/RS OF 



der the roof, with a humble dressing-maid 
"who shared, as a friend, the privations of 
her life. In those days there used to be 
theatrical amateurs, who haunted the or- 
chestra, and criticised or advised the artists. 
Such an one was M. Andre de Murville, an 
old friend of Fontanes, a son-in-law (think 
of it ! ) of Sophie Arnauld, a disappointed 
author, who had never achieved more than 
a half or quarter success, a perpetual candi- 
date for the Academy, guilty of many ab- 
surdities, but still a man of wit, learning, 
and a certain good taste. This M. de Mur- 
ville became much attached to the young 
actress, and undertook to be her counsellor. 
He used, therefore, to visit her often, and 
always precisely at dinner-time, when he 
would unceremoniously invite himseH 
remain. There ensued a great panic in the 
modest household, on account of the sudden 
increase of expense occasioned by this mi- 



MME. DESBORDES- VALMORE. 



expected guest, who had the large appetite 
of one who does not always dine. It was 
as if a couple of birds, living upon seeds 
and crumbs of bread, should see arrive, in 
the character of a friend, a huge, good- 
natured vulture, famished for flesh, and dis- 
posed to do honor to their own repast. One 
day, as Murville was mounting the last steps 
of the staircase, the maid rushed in terror 
into her mistress's room, and announced a 
peril more imminent than usual. It was 
the end of the month, and for reasons only 
too cogent, there was barely food enough 
left for two abstemious feminine stomachs. 
What was to be done? Poor Murville, 
after the first greetings, was not slow to per- 
ceive the embarrassment which he caused. 
He talked right and left, — art, the drama, 
Mile. Gaussin, Mile. Desgarcins, and other 
brilliant models, but muttered between his 
teeth in a kind of aside" "O my children, 



26 



MEM( URS < '/•" 



no matter what! any thing! A good large 
piece of bread. That surely eannot incom- 
mode yon ! " And lie made the mortifying 
gesture of a hungry man. The unhappy 
author was indeed famished. But yon 
should have heard Mme. Valmore re- 
hearse that little scene. One laughed 
and cried in the same breath. It was a 
regular bit of comic opera or demi-vaude- 
villc. 

The correspondence of this epoch has not 
been preserved. It is only in the decline 
of life, when we have come to the age of 
retrospection, that we think of saving our 
letters. Among those addressed to Mme. 
Valmore in 1821 and the following years, I 
have, however, found some interesting ones 
from Mme. Sophie Gay, Avho had taken a 
strong fancy to our author, and who, when 
the latter was living at Lyons or Bordeaux, 
kept her informed of all that occurred in 



MME. BE SB ORDES- VA LMORE. 



-7 



the poetical world of Paris, — of the first 
success of the beautiful Delphine, the daz- 
zling homage she received, and also of her 
first unhappy attachment to that young offi- 
cer, gentleman, and poet, Alfred de Vigny. 
There are also letters from a less distin- 
guished person, Mme. de Launay, who ap- 
peared on the stage under the name of 
Mile. Hopkins, — exceedingly vivacious, 
witty, and agreeable. Piquant details might 
be extracted from these last, concerning 
more than one famous or temporarily fash- 
ionable artist ; and one at least of these 
anecdotes, I think, may be profitably re- 
peated. It is the story of the outrageous 
reception accorded to those English actors 
who, in 1822, attempted for the first time to 
give us some idea of Shakspeare. In 1822 
national and classical intolerance yet reigned 
supreme; we were in a chronic rage 
against Albion, and the invective of the 



T<- 



MEMOIRS OF 



' ; Messenienne " ! was our law. Five years 
later, in 1827-28, when a second English 
troupe returned to the charge in the repre- 
sentation of Shakspeare, a great advance 
had been made in the interval among culti- 
vated minds. The ideas of the " Globe : ' 
newspaper had come to prevail among our 
youth ; and this time there was a grave, 
attentive, studious reception, — and even 
some enthusiasm. Miss Smithson, among 
others, captivated us all ; and Berlioz, that 
man of noble intelligence just gone from 
among us, was smitten as suddenly as Ro- 
meo himself, and beheld the realization of 
his supreme ideal, — genuine beauty. In 
1822, however, we were still in the bondage 
of a blind and thoroughly brutal prejudice. 
I know no better word. The reader shall 
judge. The date is not a particularly hon- 
orable one in our literary history, and might 



1 Originally an elegy on the sorrows <>(' Messenia. 
quently an elegy on thewoea of any invaded country. 



Subse- 
(Tr.) 



MME. DESBORDES-VALMORE. 29 

well be expunged, but only on condition 
that the scandal be never repeated. 

"We have at the Porte-Saint-Martin," wrote 
Mme. de Laimay, Aug. 6, 1822, "a troupe of 
English comedians. Apparently they are not 
very good, but is that any reason why they should 
be flayed alive ? The pit precipitated itself tumul- 
tuously upon the stage in order to force the actors 
off it. In vain did the poor English appeal to 
the rights of hospitality. Our bearish populace 
knew nothing about that. One actress was 
wounded in the forehead by a great sou. Finally, 
after the most terrific racket, Pierson, the actor, 
came forward and asked if the English might go 
on. Before replying, the pit greeted poor Pierson 
with deafening applause, until he was perfectly 
stupefied. After testifying their ardent patriotism 
to this great actor, they decided that they would 
hear the rest of the tragedy of ' Othello.' The cur- 
tain rose for the third time, and disclosed Desde- 
mona on a bed. Immediately they began to cry, 
'Give her a glass of . . . that's what she needs.' 
The actress began to sing. All the whistles of 
Saint Cloud sprang to the lips of our gentle com- 



* 



MEMOIRS OF 



patriots, for an accompaniment. Then came 
apples, nuts, eggs, and sous. The poor woman 
nearly died bowing to this gallant pit, — but it 
was pitiless. Oh, how the Parisian is changed ! 
What has become of our enviable reputation as 
a hospitable people? Where are the thousand 
amiable qualities that once were ours, and that 
made me proud of belonging to the parish of Saint 
Eustache. And now my countrymen have just 
committed a gross injustice. Why ? Because 
they want to claim reprisals ! Leave to others 
their savage humor : but do you, Frenchmen, keep 
your shining qualities. They say these unfor- 
tunate actors arc going to Lyons. You must tell 
me how they fare in that place."' 



Has the " gentle " Frenchman really im- 
proved I Does he not now and then uncon- 
sciously re-enact the same scene "with altered 
names ? Do not our dandies and kid- 
glove gentry have recourse to the same 
methods'? Remember the performances of 
Tannhauser! 

Mine. Valmore's first reputation as a 



MME. DESBORDES-VALMORE. 31 

tender elegiac poet, and pleasing writer of 
narrative verse, was made in the years be- 
tween 182i and 1827. While she was 
away from Paris, residing at Lyons or Bor- 
deaux, her new star had taken its place in 
our poetic firmament, and shone there with 
a soft lustre tranquil and unclouded. Mme. 
Valmore had never broken with tradition. 
She had introduced a new variety of the 
romance. She had rendered the elegy more 
tender and feminine, and translated into a 
sweeter key the impassioned avowal and the 
plaint of the forsaken heart. Mme. Sophie 
Gay wrote of her in October, 1820, after 
quoting some of her verses. " How could 
one better depict the charm of that melan- 
choly which M. de Segur calls the luxury 
of grief?" And she promised her a place 
in the temple of Taste beside Mine. Des 
Houlieres. 1 M. Creuze de Lesser, an au- 

1 Article in the " Revue Encyclopedique." 



4«- 



32 MEMOIRS OF 



thor with a dash of the administrator, but 
not without merit, wrote to her from Mont- 
pellier, December 1st, 1827. 

"For a long time, madame, I have read and I 
have liked what you have published. Among all 
the women of our day who write, you have incon- 
testably the most sensibility and the most grace. 
The reputation of a woman is apt to be a little 
exaggerated. I was reminded of this the other 
day in reading the poems of Mme. Dufrdnoy, who 
has written some very pretty things, but too few 
of them for the place that some would award her. 
Your reputation, madame, is of a better quality. 
You rise higher than she, and you do it oftener. 
You have done some exquisite things which are also 
inimitable; and you know how to gild with the 
halo of poetry transports of feeling which it is 
impossible to forget. There is plenty of wit in 
France; but genuine sensibility is exceedingly rare 
among us, and this is one of your domains. It 
gives me extreme pleasure to be able to be at once 
so frank and so flattering/' 

He tempers his eulogium by certain 



MME. DESBORDES-VALMORE. ^Z 

strictures on faults of haste and carelessness. 
Such was then the judgment of classical 
minds of a good quality, and in its own 
place I respect it. The order of criticism 
is appropriate to the form of poetry. 

But how much had this lovely and affect- 
ing muse yet to gain, before inspiring the 
last poems and lyrics of Mme. Valmore, 
especially those which have been published 
since her death ! 

The spur of constant suffering, patient 
effort also, the suggestions of poets bolder 
and more vigorous than herself, the exam- 
ples by which she fondly and emulously 
profited, and a mysterious but ever increas- 
ing skill in the management of her own 
tearful tones, — these things effected, to- 
wards 1834, a sensible change in her work, 
and conducted her, if not to artistic perfec- 
tion, so difficult of complete attainment, at 
least to the free and full development of 



34 



MEMOIRS OF 



those warm sympathetic qualities which 
centred in her soul. Would you measure 
the advance thus made ? Set side by side 
with our author's earliest poems the wail 
that I subjoin, and which I have rescued 
from a heap of blotted and corrected first 
drafts. At least it shall not be said that 
this my first article on Mme. Valmore is 
wholly prosaic, — unrelieved by a single 
one of those piercing notes which she alone 
(and perhaps Dorval) could deliver. That 
note is here employed on a familiar theme, 
— the anguish of a broken heart, of a 
wound whose depth one dares not search 
and prove. 

PARTED. 

Do not write. I am sad and would my life were o'er. 
A summer without thee? — Oh, night of starless 
gloom ! — 
I fold the idle arms, that cannot clasp thee more — 
To knock at my heart's door, were like knocking on 
a toad). 

Do not write. 



MME. DESBORDES-VALMORE. 35 

Do not write. We will learn unto ourselves to die. 
Ask God, or ask thyself of my love, if thou wouldst 
know ; 
But to hear thee calling far away and calling tenderly, 
Were to hear the songs of Heaven afar and never 
hope to go. 

Do not write. 

Do not write ; for I fear thee. I do not dare to think 
How thy voice was wont to sound lest it seem to call 
anew. 
Do not show living water to one who cannot drink ; 
The writing of a friend is a likeness passing true. 
Do not write. 

Do not write those sweet words, for I may not read them 
now : 
They would flood my foolish heart with a deceitful 
bliss. 
They are brilliant with thy smile, with thy tenderness 
aglow ; 
I could not choose but dream thou hadst sealed them 
with a kiss. 

Do not write. 

So sang the Yalmore of later years in 
the retrospect of her sorrows, old and new. 
Compare these verses with some of her ear- 



3<5 



Ml-.MOIRS OF 



liest elegies, — "Ma scour, il est parti." and 
others. There is just as much difference in 
her order as there is between an ode in one 
of Victor Hugo's earliest " Collections " and 
one of the u Contemplations." It was doubt- 
less under the impression left by some such 
outburst that Michelet once wrote to her, — 
" Sublimity is natural to you." And after 
looking over her last collection of poems he 
wrote to his son (Dec. 25th, 1859) : — 



" My heart is full of her. The other day I saw 
Orjyhee, and she came back to me with perfectly 
irresistible power, agitating my heart as none but 
she ever could. 

11 Oh, how deeply I regret that while she lived 
I so seldom gave expression to the profound and 
peculiar sympathy between us ! " x 

1 The day after the present article appeared, M. Sainte- 
Reuve received from M. Michelet the following letter: — 
" How perfectly, my dear sir, you have divined and described 
her who alone among us had the////? of tears, — that gilt which 
smites the rock and dissipates the drought of the soul ! I knew 
her only in advanced years when she was tenderer than ever, 



*- 



MME. DESBORDES-VALMORE. 37 



II. 

One does not write the life of a woman, 
— her formal biography. I shall only note 
those salient points in Mme. Valmore's 
career, without which it would be impossi- 
ble to appreciate extracts from her corre- 
spondence. 

That restless destiny which had repeatedly 
driven her back and forth from Rouen to 
Brussels, and from Brussels to Rouen, not 
to mention a few brief sojourns at Paris, — 
was varied in 1838 by a final and notable 
episode. In August of that year, a certain 
theatrical manager conceived the idea of 
engaging French actors to perform at the 
time of the consecration of the Emperor 

but shadowed by approaching death ; distracted, as one might 
say, by death and love. Affectionately yours, 

" J. MlCHELET." 

March 23, 1869. 



* 



MEMi >IRS < >/■' 



Ferdinand as king of Lombardy, which was 
to take place at Milan, and was expected to 
attract thither a crowd of strangers. Mine. 
Valmore, with her two daughters, accompa- 
nied her husband on this expedition, leaving 
only her son in France. For the artists 
who put serious faith in the engagement, 
it proved a cruel deception ; but the poet 
gained a glimpse of an illustrious land, — 
of the wide horizons and the landscapes be- 
loved of Virgil, and her taste could not fail 
to be enlarged. A little album in which 
she noted down her impressions presents 
them only fragmentarily ; but it was there 
that she conceived and sang her fine invoca- 



tion to the sun : 



" O thou, who smilest brightly still 

On him of low estate, 
Of poverty and pain and ill 

Ever compassionate, 
A passing storm thy brow may shade 

But hope at eve will shine ; 



MME. DESBORDES-VALMORE. 



39 



And hope hath never been betrayed 
By that farewell of thine. 

" Uncurtained is my casement bare, 

Save that thou madest grow 
A plane-tree there, whose foliage fair 

Shall wreathe my humble brow. 
We roam this grand Italian land 

Alone in poor disguise ; 
But feel the warmth on every hand 

Of thy sweet charities." 

The image of the plane-tree at the cur- 
tainless window — at least in the two first 
lines of the stanza — is captivating. One 
feels that it is taken from life, and not a 
poetic fiction. And in a letter to Mme. 
Pauline Duchambge, dated Milan, Sept. 20, 
1838, just before her return, I read these 
words : " Mile. Mars will bring you a leaf 
of the plane-tree which served me for a 
curtain." 

It seems that Mile. Mars had gone to 
Milan to give a few performances on the 



4° 



MKMO/RS OF 



occasion of the ceremony mentioned above ; 
and it was a happy chance for her impru- 
dent countrymen, whom the knavery of the 
impresario had left literally in the streets. 
She played for their benefit, to assist them 
to return home. The quarterly payment of 
Mme. Yalmore's own little pension also 
came opportunely, and was divided among 
these needy ones ; and, when this proved 
insufficient, she sold some of her personal 
effects for the same purpose. 

After this excursion, — the longest, ex- 
cept the voyage to the Antilles, which she 
ever attempted, Mme. Valmore returned 
with her family to Paris and lived there 
habitually. If she continued to wander it 
was only from quarter to quarter, — from 
one to another of those various lodgings into 
which domestic necessities too often forced 
her. I have spoken of her receiving a 
pension, and must explain the circum- 



MME. DESBORDES-VALMORE. 



41 



stances, the rather as her letters are full of 
painful allusions to the matter, from which, 
nevertheless, it would be unjust to draw 
extreme conclusions against society and 
men. Mme. Valmore never accused any 
one. She was by nature as far removed 
from recrimination as from declamation. 
She had really met in her sorrowful career 
with many friends who were neither insen- 
sible to her needs nor inactive on her 
behalf; but personally she was too modest 
and delicate much to enjoy favors, and far 
more inclined to give than receive services. 
A lady for whose goodness of heart and 
graces of manner we can never be suffi- 
ciently grateful, Mme. Recamier, early in 
formed by M. de Latouche of the genius 
and the circumstances of Mme. Valmore, 
eagerly undertook to obtain a favor for her. 
When M. de Montmorency was elected 
member of the French Academy, in 1825, 

* — — _ — __ 4, 



42 MEMOIRS OF 



he generously resolved to transfer the salary 
to some needy man of letters, as Lucien 
Bonaparte had done before him, — who. it 
may be remembered, had given his pension 
from the institute to Beranger, then hardly 
known. Mme. Recamier instantly thought 
of suggesting Mme. Valmore to M. de Mont- 
morency ; but was met by a scruple on the 
part of the lady herself. M. de Latouche, 
who knew her well, had dissuaded Mme. 
Recamier from the outset; and Mme. Val- 
more, the moment the idea was broached to 
her, recoiled from it with instinctive dis- 
taste. She felt, she knew not why, that 
she could not be under obligation to a great 
nobleman, were he the best man in the 
world. The modest and high-minded ple- 
beian could never have endured to have the 
malicious world say of her what it used to 
say of a somewhat noted litterateur, and the 
tallest man I ever knew, who went in those 



MME., DESBORDES-VALMORE. 43 

days by the name of M. de Montmorency's 
beggar. From Bordeaux, where she was 
then residing, she hastened to reply to Mme. 
Hecamier. 

'- ' Forgive me that my hands do not open to 
accept a gift so kindly offered. My heart alone 
shall receive and treasure all that is most precious 
and consoling in such a benefit, — the memory, 
namely, of the benefactor, and a sense of grati- 
tude unincumbered by gold. I can only beg you 
to accept my warmest thanks and my respectful 
refusal. It is to your adorable goodness that I 
owe this compliment on the part of a distinguished 
man who does not know me, and to you, Madame, 
I shall always remain devoted." 

In the same letter, however, Mme. Val- 
more, knowing the steps that Mme. Reca- 
mier had taken to procure her a regular 
pension through the intercession of M. de 
La Rouchefoucauld, added, — 

" But if, Madame, the other favor of which you 
deem me not unworthy is some day granted, I 



44 



MEMOIRS OF 



shall be glad to owe it to you. I would like to 
have genius in order to justify your flattering 
patronage, and to deserve the purely literary 
encouragement which you hint at in the future. 
I should be perfectly content to obtain that through 
you, and neither too proud nor too humble to ac- 
cept it." 

Yet when the little pension in question 
was obtained, — a pension in the king's 
name, — the modest and magnanimous poet- 
ess had a wounded feeling and a moral 
repugnance to touching it. She seems even 
to have thought in her simplicity, that the 
money of the state ought to go straight 
from the sovereign to one's own door, and 
in May, 1826, she wrote to an excellent 
friend of hers, — a justice of the peace at 
Douai, — M. Duthilleul, — 

" I was told that I had a pension. I received 
a letter from a minister to that effect, and it 
was put in the papers, and that is the last I 
have heard of it. I deserved it so little that I do 



MME. DESBORDES- VA LMORE. 



45 



not regret it, any more than I wanted or asked 
for it." 

In September, her uncle, Constant Des- 
bordes, wrote to her that a good deal of 
surprise was expressed at the bureau of the 
royal household that she had neither ap- 
peared there herself nor sent a representa- 
tive ; since her pension, which was dated 
the previous January, had now been run- 
ning nine months. He had felt before, he 
said, that he ought to scold her for appear- 
ing too indifferent to a favor so entirely 
honorable to herself. Her friend Mme. de 
Launay also, who had learned the news 
from the journals, and had written a lively 
letter of congratulation, felt obliged to rally 
and rate her in her own peculiar fashion. 1 

1 In a letter dated Nov. 1, 1826, Mme. de Launay wrote like 
a good royalist, and spirited and sensible friend as she was, but 
wholly unable to comprehend Mme. Valm ore's scruples : " I 
forgive you the nonchalance which you assume about receiving 
a pension, which cannot fail from every point of view of being 



4 6 



MEMOIRS OF 



The truth is that, although entirely ignorant 
of politics and every thing pertaining thereto, 
Mme. Valmore's sympathies were liberal 
and popular, devoted to the oppressed and 
the vanquished. She was a thorough patriot 
in the sense in which the word was then 
employed, and had been ill six weeks on 
account of the disaster at "Waterloo. From 



exceedingly acceptable. It flatters both the vanity and the 
purse. None but the saints would refuse such a favor, and 
even to them I should say, ' Gracious saints, this money may 
prove useful to those who are dependent upon you, so pray lay 
aside your indifference or disdain. Do not think of yourselves, 
but consider that the pension may be useful about bringing up 
your children.' This consideration ought, I think, to decide 
Sainte Marceline to accept the gifts of Providence. Consider, 
my friend, the hand winch offers you this gift is that of the 
most honorable man in the world. Our king's heart is the 
home of every virtue. lie is extremely sensitive, pious, and 
tender-hearted. I do assure you he is a very angel upon earth. 
How can you who are so good and affectionate fail to love 
him 1 Believe me, Charles X. is worthy of you and me. Now 
take your pension or I shall be angry." Mme. de Launay 
would have been still more mystified bad she known that the 
first thought of her singular friend had been to give her lirst 
three quarters to the Greek cause, because she knew not bow 
to justify and purify the money in her own eyes. Finally she 
gave it to her uncle Desbordes. 



MME. DESBORDES-VALMORE. 47 

1830 onward, her heart leaped at every 
great national or popular explosion, — days 
of July, Poland, and Warsaw, the insur- 
rection at Lyons in 1834, which she herself 
witnessed, February, 1848, — but I for- 
bear. In great crises like these she was no 
longer mistress of her feelings. Suddenly, 
swiftly as a flock of doves, they rose into 
the upper air. She could not help embrac- 
ing the side of the people and of all peoples. 
One can understand what it must have cost 
her to receive gifts from the great and pow- 
erful, from those whom she could not call 
her brothers. She believed that, in certain 
cases, " money demoralizes even the giver." 
She had a theory, only too well justified by 
experience, that the poor and suffering 
ought to confide their sorrows only to one 
another, — ought to assist and support one 
another. Her Christianity, as we shall see, 
was of this type. She was the child of the 



48 MEMOIRS OF 



Sermon on the Mount. However, the pen- 
sion was granted and continued. Under 
Louis Philippe, — thanks to the kindness 
of M. Thiers, — it was even increased, and 
although subject later to variations and re- 
ductions it never fell below two thousand 
francs. So much it is but just to say in 
defence of society and those in power. It 
does not alter the rest of the story, and the 
pathetic facts I have to tell remain in all 
their bitter reality. We do not sufficiently 
realize, the happy and affluent especially 
are too apt to forget, that when once a hum- 
ble household has fallen behindhand in its 
expenses, when work has been suspended 
and arrears created which have grown into 
debts, there is no such thing as recovery : 
this weight must be carried for life. That 
which exactly suffices under the simplest 
ordinary conditions, if once exceeded, can 
never be regained. In the hand-to-mouth 



*■ 



i 



MME. DESBORDES-VALMORE. 49 

life of the proletary, recovery from disaster 
or indebtedness is simply impossible. No 
political economy can alter this inexorable 
fact. 

Another preliminary explanation must be 
made. It concerns Mme. Valmore's relig- 
ion, which will reappear on every page. 
She was pious ; but her piety was all charity, 
and it was peculiar to herself. Educated 
in the revolutionary years, in a poor and 
simple home, near a ruined church and 
opposite a rustic cemetery, where she used 
both to play and pray, clinging passionately 
to her baby faiths and all the sweet super- 
stitions of her early years, she confounded 
in the same homely affection, God and her 
father, the virgin and her mother and 
sisters. She was an angel of filial devo- 
tion to her father, whom she lost in 1817. 
She continued to live in the very presence 
of the dear departed, whom she perpetually 



MEMOIRS OF 



invoked. An eminent and kindly critic, 
M. Yinet (himself a positive Christian), in 
speaking of Mme. Valmore's volume en- 
titled " Tears,'' found it impossible to divest 
himself of the idea that there was a species 
of sacrilege in the confused adoration which 
associated God and the angels with her 
various human loves, — even the most in- 
tense. But the truth is that no love which 
was sincere and worthy of the name was 
profane in her eyes. 1 And the only point 
needful to note is this, — that even in her 

1 M. Vinet's article appeared in a Protestant journal. — 
"Le Semeur." Mme. Valmore received it thoughtfully and 
with respect, and alluded to it in a letter written on the eighth 
of December, 1833, to M. Froussard, the principal of the insti- 
tution at Grenoble, where her son was at school. " I have 
read the article to which you drew my attention. It seems to 
me sober and just, and I have shed a good many tears over it. 
The ardent and devoted love which I bear my children may 
perhaps win me forgiveness for other errors. If an eternity 
of pain could follow a life stormy and bitter as mine has been, 
my heart would break indeed." Ber tender heart, .-till more 
than her sound head, rejected this idea of everlasting punish- 
ment. A few months after the publication of these articles, 
M. Sainte-Beuve wrote to the excellent widow of M. Yinet, 



MME. DESBORDES-VALMORE. 51 

most cherished beliefs she remained inde- 
pendent, and never introduced a third per- 
son, — a man between herself and God. If 
she went into a church to pray, — as she 
often did, — it was between the services 
and when the nave was empty. She had 
her Christ, the Christ of the poor and for- 
saken, the prisoner and the slave, the Christ 
of the Magdalene, and the good Samaritan, 
a Christ of the future of whom she herself 
has sung in one of her sweetest strains : ■ — 

" He whose pierced hands have broken so many chains." 

But as years went by and sorrows multiplied, 
and fate dealt heavy blows, this faith was in- 
evitably crossed by many a doubt, and often 

who had read and re-read and was deeply affected by them, 
but who repudiated on her husband's behalf the formidable 
interpretation put upon his words : " Do not be too uneasy 
about the critique on Mine. Valmore. It was severe indeed, 
for it was written by a Christian man who never jested, either 
with words or things ; but the impression made upon Mine. 
Valmore herself was altogether serious, and it seems to me 
that she accepted it just as M. Vinet would have wished her 
to do." 



MEMOIRS OF 



obscured by funereal shadows. AVlicn 
there was no one left for her to exhort, to 
warm and comfort with her own hopes, 
when at last she was alone with herself, — 
illusions all dissipated ; realities confirmed 
and exhausted, even to the dregs, — in the 
long months that preceded her death, a 
great silence fell upon her. AVe must re- 
member, too, when we read what she has 
written, that a poet is not necessarily a 
physician, nor a philosopher (fortunatus et 
ille cleos qui novit agrestes), and also that, 
behind the charming play of her imagina- 
tion and the impulses of her heart, that heart 
which remained, in so many respects, that of 
a little child, this woman possessed extraor- 
dinary fortitude, and a sublime courage. 

Her immediate family consisted of five be- 
loved beings : her husband, who was honor 
and probity itself, — who suffered as a man 
only can from compulsory inaction, and 



MME. DESBORDES-VALMORE. 



53 



asked only honest employment, and the 
privilege to work, 1 — and three children, 
rarely gifted, a son born in 1820, and two 
daughters, Undine, born in 1822, and Ines, 
in 1826. Of these girls, both of whom 
died before her, Ines, the younger, — deli- 
cate, poetic, sensitive, and inclined to mel- 
ancholy, self-distrustful, and anxiously af- 
fectionate (" there never was a child," said 
her mother, " who needed so much caress- 
ing"), — was attacked by a malady whose 
chief symptom was extreme prostration, 
and expired at the age of twenty, December 
•4, 1846. Undine, whose real name was 
Hyacinthe, but who had been called Undine 
from infancy, was also of a poetic tempera- 
ment, and even herself a poet, inheriting 

1 He obtained, at last, in September, 1852, a humble but 
honorable and congenial place in the Imperial Library, as 
editor of the " Catalogue." Those who furthered his appoint- 
ment can hardly have realized, with what a " sacred content," 
what a " deep sigh of gratitude," they filled hearts little ac- 
customed to success. I copy these expressions word for word. 



54 



MEMOIRS OF 



from her mother the gift of song. She died 
at thirty, February 12, 1853. She had been 
married a short time before to M. Langlais, 
representative from the department of the 
Sarthe, and afterwards councillor of state, 
a man of merit, who died on a mission to 
the Emperor Maximilian, in Mexico. This 
fascinating Undine had points both of like- 
ness and unlikeness to her mother. Small 
of stature, with regular features and lovely 
blue eyes, she had something angelic and 
puritanical about her, a serious and stead- 
fast character, a pure and lofty sensibility. 
Unlike her mother, who opened her heart 
to all, whose every hour was invaded, she 
felt the necessity of control and reserve ; 
and the reticence of her premature wisdom 
sometimes awoke a sort of anxiety and af- 
fectionate alarm in the heart of her mother, 
unaccustomed to dissociate affection from 
entire confidence. She used sometimes to sav 



MME. DESBORDES-VALMORE. 55 

to herself with reference to Undine, during 
the weary seasons when the latter was away, 
and in the sleepless nights when anxiety be- 
came a positive nightmare : " This mother's 
love is just as painful as the other." Un- 
dine was a great student. She passed sev- 
eral years as an assistant teacher, and a 
cherished friend as well, in the boarding- 
school of Mme. Bascans at Chaillot. I used 
sometimes to go and see her there. She 
had undertaken Latin and read the " Odes 
of Horace " intelligently. She read Eng- 
lish, and had translated into verse several 
of Cowper's poems, especially the hymn be- 
ginning " God moves in a mysterious way," 
a poem which recalls the canticles of Ra- 
cine, and breathes the very spirit of Saint 
Paul. She also read Pascal, whose Thoughts 
were in those years the subject of much 
literary criticism. Concerning them she 
wrote to a friend : — 



56 



mi:moirs of 



" When I came home at night I found your 
letter and Pascal, whom I have not been able to 
leave since. So you see I have been both busy 
and happy for many days. It is very sweet to 
find kindred spirits in the past, and to live with 
them still in spite of death." 

She had written a poem on the "Jour des 
Morts," which was also her birthday, in 
which she said, addressing the loved and 
lost, whom she imagined, as it were, trans- 
figured in their higher life : — 

" What matter names and spheres to you. 
Friends of our friends, beloved and true? 
Doubtless the homage of our tears 
Moves angel hearts in those far spheres, 
And in the rest that you have won 
Love surely lives, though tears are done." 

In 18-18, thanks to the recommendation 
of Armand Marrast, Undine was appointed 
inspectress of girls' schools, an office whose 
duties she fulfilled conscientiously until 
attacked by her last illness. 



►j«- 



* 



MME. DESBORDES-VALMORE. 57 



Amonsr Mme. Valmore's other near rela- 
tives, hardly less dear to her than her own 
home circle, were a brother at Douai, and 
two sisters and a niece living at Eouen, — 
apparently in very narrow circumstances. 
The brother, to whom she wrote regularly, 
was an old soldier who had served under 
the empire in the war with Spain, but who 
had never risen above the grade of sergeant, 
and had been made a prisoner by the Eng- 
lish on the Scotch pontoons. Old, infirm, 
and poor, he was unable to attain even the 
dignity of an invalid ; and all that was pos- 
sible was to obtain for him, through the 
special representations of M. Martin, of the 
Nord, the privilege of being lodged and 
boarded in the hospital of Douai, nearly 
opposite the house where he was born. 
This humble brother was always to be re- 
lieved, encouraged, and even assisted by 
occasional remittances of money (twenty 



MEMOIRS OF 



francs a month if possible) ; but while dol- 
ing out her tiny alms, the loving sister found 
means infinitely to diversify the moral balm 
which she poured into his wounds. 

And now let us speak of herself. Let us 
follow her a while through some of the 
most peculiar and private ramifications of her 
correspondence, beginning with the letters 
addressed to the aforesaid brother, Felix 
Desbordes, pensioner of the general hospital 
at Douai. 

"January 11, 1843. 
" My eldest girl is all this while in England, 
to my great sorrow ; 2 her absence is beginning to 
be unendurable. I trust that the fine weather 
will quite set her up again, and pray God with 
all my heart that it may be so. Dear Felix, 



l Undine had undertaken this journey as companion to the 
daughter of Mme. Branchu. Her lungs were already affected, 
but she did not know the gravity of her situation, which had 
been revealed to us by a consultation with Doctor Louis, and 
she reposed entire confidence in the homoeopathic treatment 
of Doctor Curie. 



Of ME. DESBORDES-VALMORE. 



59 



when the burden of our sorrows becomes too heavy 
to be borne, let us not forget that his goodness 
has never quite forsaken us, and that we are his 
children. Something great is concealed by what 
we suffer, and the more we pay in advance, the 
more richly will he reward us for having sought 
and trusted him in the midst of our trials. There 
are times when my heart will sink, and yet I 
always feel myself upheld by that divine hand, 
which made us brother and sister that we might 
love and help one another. Dear Felix, you 
know the joy it is to me to fulfil my charge, and 
I thank you for the manner in which you have 
fulfilled yours. Your faithful affection has many 
a time consoled me for the light and transient 
character of this world's friendships. Ours will 
be eternal. I send you twenty-five francs. I 
could not make it more. There is always some 
reason why I must check the impulses of my 
heart. You believe it: do you not? Of course 
you do ; for if I were not poor, you would not 
be so." 



6o MEMOIRS OF 



•■ Apbix 11. L843. 
" You see, dear brother, that I am al\\a\ a ;i 
little behindhand in the discharge of my duty. 
Obstacles of many kinds seem to contradict that 
word always. But you see, too, that perseverance 
in well-doing always touches the heart of Gud, 
who seems to say at last, ' That will do ! ' Still, 
if my heart had always been right, it seems as if I 
must have prospered with so good a father. It 
makes me happy to know, dear brother, that you 
have an impulse to prayer. I do not think there 
is any thing sweeter or more satisfactory in life than 
voluntai'ily to turn to him who gave us our being, 
and all that we love on earth. Worldly posses- 
sions fade away, but this refuge remains immuta- 
ble. If we believe in a just and compassionate 
Judge, nothing can humiliate us. He will restore 
all that we thought stolen or lost. It seems to 
me that the great love I bear to God makes me 
cling all the more fondly to the earthly tics by 
which he himself lias bound my woman's heart. 
You, too, will feel the stormier transports of manly 
love subside in the presence of that vast affection 
which purifies all others, and you will become \c 



MME. DESBORDES-VALMORE. 6 1 

a little child, made rich and happy by a flower. 
Think with what consideration you might surround 
yourself, even in that retreat, that lazaretto of the 
soul. 

" Mme. Saudeur, who came four days ago, 
brought me your letter and the manuscripts, which 
I have not yet had time to open, for I am all at 
sixes and sevens. Work, letters, housekeeping, 
sewing, and visitors fill up my days, which last 
from eight o'clock till midnight. I will speak of 
what you sent me at some future time. Do not 
forget what I said to you about treasuring all that 
you remember clearly of our family, and our dear 
parents. I left home so young, that I know, per- 
haps, less than you of our origin. Nothing is 
clear in my memory, except that we were very 
happy, and very unhappy ; that there was a great 
deal of sunshine for us at Sin (a village near 
Douai), and a great many flowers on the fortifi- 
cations ; a dear good father in our humble home, 
and a dear, beautiful mother, very loving, and 
sorely missed from among us." 



62 



MICMOIRS OF 



" Januaky l' 1. L847. 
" I send you herewith fifteen francs. You can- 
not have wanted them as badly as I have wanted 
to send them ; but our circumstances have not 
improved. When God will, Felix. He is above 
our cries. You can still lighten your poor sister's 
heart by the love she knows you feel for her. 
Your admirable bearing and patient dignity are 
like a cross of honor, shining all the brighter be- 
cause worn over a shabby coat. Leave all to 
God and time, and never cease to love your sor- 
rowing sister." 



• ; March 8. 1S17. 
"You see, mon ami, that I only write to-day 
to beg you to wait,' and because I would not keep 
my letter back until I might have money to send 
you. I desire, above every thing, to spare you 
the anxiety which a long silence would occasion : 
knowing well that you are just as fond of mo as I 
shall be rejoiced to share with you the first ray 
of prosperity which the Virgin sends. This 
last break-up overcame me entirely. It was 
terribly hard to relinquish all the little com- 



MME. DESBORDES-VALMORE. 



63 



forts I had. How poor I must be, to let you 
be so poor ! " 

We have now gained all the insight pos- 
sible, into the secrets of that heart-rending 
destiny. 

There has been a great diversity of opin- 
ion about the then minister of justice, Mar- 
tin of the Nord. I do not think that his 
end should invalidate any thing that was good 
in his life ; and it is but justice to his 
memory to say that he was very humane, 
and that Mme. Valmore never appealed in 
vain to him, as a compatriot and national 
representative. Scarcely a year passed that 
she did not ask of him Christmas gifts for 
the poor, or the release of prisoners ; and 
she had a way of insinuating into her 
request a word of their Flemish jKitois 
(accoufm un peo), which never failed of 
success. 






64 MEMOIRS OF 



■• Mar< 11 8, 1-17. 
" A very serious anxiety has just been added 
to my other troubles on account of the dangerous 
illness of M. Martin, of the Nord. lie is exceed- 
ingly good to me, and has been very merciful to 
several prisoners whom he has pardoned at my 
intercession. Moreover he has thrice opened the 
Odeon to supposed friends of Valmore's, on whose 
behalf he appealed to the minister. I shall never 
forget M. Martin, nor cease to pray for him. It 
was his influence which obtained your own humble 
place, after he had made application for you. at 
the Invalides. In a word, I have never seen any 
thing in him but kindness, and unfailing charity. 
His misfortune affects me very much." 

We arc not used, as I have said, to regard 
Mile. Mars, the actress, from a sentimental 
point of view. In her theatrical relations, 
this highly-gifted woman was considered 
rude and severe to those associated with 
her ; hut to those whom she really loved, 
she was a staunch, loyal, brave, and vain- 



MME. DESBORDES-VALMORE. 65 

able friend. Her letters to Mme. Valmore, 
brisk, resolute, and almost manly in tone, 
reveal her in the latter light, — a firm, faith- 
ful soul, active in her affection, and entirely 
trustworthy ; and Mme. Valmore rewarded 
her by a kind of adoring gratitude. 

" April 7, 1847. 
"Your kind letter found me overwhelmed by 
new and keen afflictions. Already stricken by the 
terrible death of M. Martin, I am agonized anew 
by that of my life-long friend, Mile. Mars. I 
adored her genius, and her inimitable grace, and I 
loved her with all my heart, for a faithful friend, 
whom our misfortunes had never alienated. In 
the midst of her last sickness, she was eagerly 
interested about procuring my dear Valmoi'e a 
place in Paris. Good Felix, I beseech you to 
offer a prayer for that almost divine woman. If 
you knew how she had felt for me, in my maternal 
sorrow, you would love her as we love the angels. 
As such I mourn her. I am a sorely bereaved 
woman, my poor friend. 
5 



66 MEMOIRS OF 



" Undine remains at Chaillot, teaching a host 
of children. This takes her from US, but she dis- 
charges her onerous duties with courage and gayety, 
and they do not seem to prey upon her health. I 
am always anxious about that. Hippolyte is 
doing extremely well, and is universally beloved. 
He is a good boy, and has a very uncommon 
intellect. He has, moreover, the charm of an 
open character, and very quiet tastes. May God 
bless him ! 

" I enclose in this letter twelve poor francs, 
and I press your hand affectionately. If our 
Lord and the Virgin take pity on me, you shall 
be the first to know it. 

" They are in terrible trouble at Rouen, but 
you have enough to bear without my telling you 
the tale of their distress. Wait and believe." 

"June 15, 1847. 
" I have been too much depressed to write to 
you ; I could not even frank my letter. You 
sec, my dear friend, that to try for a place just 
now is absolutely suffocating ; still we have some 
hope. But if our dear father and mother can see, 



* 



MME. DESBORDES-VALMORE. 6 J 

from where they are, what their children endure, 
I pity them, loving as they always were. This is 
a dreadfully melancholy idea, and yet it is consol- 
ing. The saddest of all would be, to think that 
we were nothing to those whom we have never 
ceased to mourn. 

" I try to find solace in work, but write I can- 
not, for my thoughts will dwell upon Ines, my 
dear, lost child. 

"I am studying, or trying to study. I want 
to add Spanish to the English language, which I 
know pretty well. Spanish has a fascination for 
me, because I have a fancy that our family came 
from Spain, on the side of our paternal grand- 
mother. Do you not think, mo?i ami, that our 
uncle had a thoroughly Spanish face? And our 
good grandmother, also, whom I loved so dearly, 
when we used to visit her together. 

" Then, too, I remember well your own sojourn 
in Spain, and its terrible consequences, my poor 
brother. All these things, and the thought that 
you spoke that language in your warlike youth, 
help to make Spanish the most interesting of all 
studies to me." 



68 MEMOIRS OF 



She ennobled, as much* as possible, the 
past of her unfortunate brother, in order to 
give him dignity in his own eyes. She 
threw a halo of romance around every inci- 
dent, and persuaded herself that it was all 
reminiscence. 

This idea of a Spanish descent was very 
alluring to her imagination. She was not 
sure of it, but tried to convince herself, and 
besought her brother to assist her faith. 

"I always had a fancy for studying Spanish, 
because Douai is full of the traces of that nation. 
I think, brother, that we ourselves must have been 
Spanish on our father's side. Consider, Felix ! 
It cannot be but that our dear grandmother, our 
father, and our uncle Constant, came of that race, 
whose features are so unlike the genuine Flanders 
type." 

It was miraculous that she could study at 
all, amid a life so harassed and broken up. 
Poetry, at least, came to her unsought, as 



1 



MME. DESBORDES-VALMORE. 69 

a song, a sigh, or a wail of sorrow. During 
a sleepless night, or a hurried day ; on a 
quay, or under a carriage entrance, in a 
shower of rain ; amid the commonest or the 
saddest of outward circumstances, something 
began to sing within her, and she recalled 
the strain as best she could. But the bare 
reality of her life, as well as the moral 
beauty of her nature, is here revealed with- 
out disguise. 

" August 8, 1847. 
" My Dear Brother, — Your friend Devrez, 
who is about starting for our dear Flanders, is 
happy to be the bearer of our remembrances, and 
of a little parcel for you. The time has not yet 
come when I can send you more frequent, or 
larger remittances. From the depths of my heart 
a perpetual prayer goes up to God, that those I 
love may be happy. Meanwhile, he who has 
tried us thus severely, has also supported us 
miraculously, in the midst of our incurable wounds. 
The sweet sunshine, faith in him, and the love of 



MEMOIRS OF 



my dear ones ! And so I bless you, Felix, for 
your affection, which lias helped me to bear ray 
sorrows. 

" My heart overflows with gratitude and bless- 
ing toward those friends, both past and present, 
who have, at least, provided for your poor nights 
and days a shelter from the chance arrows of fate. 
Your lot is far from brilliant, but the poignant 
anxiety, caused by our actual necessities, and 
those of Eugenie and Cecile, 1 sometimes causes 
me to acquiesce, with a sigh, in the knowledge 
that you have a shelter, if ever so humble, in sight 
of our early home. That home, also, was visited 
by storm, and shaken by all the winds of misfor- 
tune. Never forget to give the house my greet- 
ing, and remember me also to our grandmother, 
and our good father, and our dear and gracious 
mother, shipwrecked so far from home. 

"Dear Felix, \\ is both sweet and sad to re- 
member. It is love and hope in one."' 

In connection with these absolutely confi- 
dential letters, one should re-read the piece 



The sisters at Rouen. 



MME. DESBORDES-VALMORE. 71 

entitled " Tristesse," which contains her 
whole childhood, and represents for us her 
" Feuillantines " : — 

" Shall I never play again in my mother's garden close ? 
Nor fling me down to rest on the graves with bios- 



Dear church, no priest was thine, no service and no 
state. 

My childish treble rang adown thy empty aisle, 
Around thy every window the bramble waved elate, 
And the mutilated Christ looked down compassionate. 

Shall I ever dream of heaven as there erewliile ? " 

Prose and poetry, romance and reality, in 
her were mingled and confounded. After a 
life of sixty years, as at the very first, she 
lived in the presence of the beloved beings 
who had surrounded and sheltered her in- 
fancy, and whom she never ceased to regard 
as the invisible witnesses, the judges and 
guardians, of her life. 



MEMOIRS OE 



"Sept. 28, 1847. 
" You are realizing the conviction I have always 
entertained, that you would one day, in the midst 
of your obscurity and misfortunes, surround your 
name with consideration and esteem. After all 
you have endured, I do not think any thing could 
touch me more. I love you dearly, my brother, 
and I have done so all my life. Judge whether 
or no I am pleased and proud to-day, to think 
that you are consoling our blessed father for the 
accumulated miseries that he sustained. I never, 
for an instant, waver in my profound belief that 
our dear father is the constant -witness of your 
actions, and that it is he who has awakened within 
you the germ of that religious faith, to which he 
sacrificed his great inheritance, from our Protestant 
uncles. I have ever revered the courage, no less 
than the poverty, which he bequeathed to us, in 
giving all his fortune to the poor. It cannot be 
that the Virgin, who presided over our birth, in 
the Rue Notre-Dame, can have forgotten this. 
No, Felix, it cannot be. She loves, in you, the 
son of him who was a father to the poor, and 
gives you in charge to those who protect and de- 
vote themselves to them. 



MME. DESBORDES-VALMORE. 73 

" But politics poison the mind. I who was 
filled with reverent emotion on visiting Geneva, 
the country of our paternal grandfather, I and my 
little family were there pursued by cries of ' Down 
with the French ! n It was only a passing ebul- 
lition of hatred, but it cut me to the heart. This 
earthly life is indeed an exile, my dear brother. 
Let us try to submit. For my own part, I con- 
fess that I pass half my time upon my knees. 
And shall we not see again those whom we have 
loved so dearly? Oh ! it is a great thought, that 
even we, in our poverty, may so direct our lives 
that we shall, at least, deserve that blessing. To 
gain in strength and elevation of mind, day by 
day; to shame, or at least to soften, those who 
have despised us, and render them glad to have 
been our allies and old friends, — there is some- 
thing in all this which may yet sanctify life." 

1 She refers here to an incident of her return from Italy, in 
1838. The little party returned by way of the Simplon and 
Geneva. It was just when Louis Philippe was arming against 
Switzerland, in order to compel the extradition of Prince Louis 
Napoleon, and the patriotic indignation of the Swiss against 
our nation, which they confounded with our government, was 
extreme. It was unfortunate, on arriving in any of their towns, 
to be known for a Frenchman. 



74 MEMOIRS OF 



There was no paling or faltering in her 
piety, — the utter freshness and delicacy of 
her moral sense, — through all her wander- 
ing life. Observe this : — 

" I love and bless you for having implanted 
your name, as you have done, in the esteem of 
those about you. Seed by seed, — but the har- 
vest will not fail. How could you comfort me 
more? I bless you in our father's and our moth- 
er's name." 

That " seed by seed " recalls another 
remark of hers, about the painful virtue of 
patience, which she illustrated by a simple 
feminine gesture. " We must make out- 
lives as we sew, — stitch by stitch." 

I have a great deal yet to say ; I have 
hardly begun. Every day we devote weary 
pages to the so-called men of authority and 
action, who pass for having ruled the world, 
when they were themselves ruled ; who have 
managed, and sometimes bartered nations. 



MME. DESBORDES-VALMORE. 



75 



And what should signify a few pages, more 
or less, when our subject is one of those 
rare beings who dwell and really rule in the 
spiritual sphere, — the realm of the heart; 
who, all their life long, have cherished and 
culled the fairest flowers of feeling; inno- 
cent, afflicted souls, who appeal to us by 
their sorrows, and who teach or recall sweet 
truths, or perhaps bitter truths sweetly 
spoken, to their poor fellow-men. And 
now, — to interrupt for a moment my con- 
tinuous note, which, however, I propose to 
resume, — I will quote, before I close this 
chapter, a letter of quite another sort ; sad 
indeed, — for Mme. Valmore seemed vowed 
to sorrow, — yet light and graceful ; full of 
an engaging, nay captivating, charity. 1 Note 
the delicacy with which it is expressed. 



1 " Amor volat, currit, et Isetatur ; liber est et non tenetur." 
Mme. Valmore's letter reminds me of this passage in the 
" Imitation." 



76 MEMOIRS OF 



She was affectionately concerned about a 
young musician, the son of a poor portress, 
who had become insane, and whom she here 
recommends to the most humane and gene- 
rous of physicians ; to him who would have 
saved, if he could, her dear Ines. 

"To Doctor Veyxe. 

August, 17, 1853. 

" There lives at No. 10 Hue de Richelieu, a 
good old portress. I never saw her but once, but 
ever since then I have felt the influence of her 
sorrowful star. Yours, my dear Samaritan, must 
follow the divine order once received to pour oil 
into every wound. 

"The son of this woman is very sick. He is 
poor, like herself; very handsome, very musical, 
very proud, and very intelligent, — a kind of 
Chatterton. 

" And once he met upon the stairs a youthful 
shape which he took for Kitty Bell, — that is all. 

" Mortification, silence, and perhaps the very 
violence of the remedies ho adopted, brought on 
the fever with which he lies stricken. 



MME. DESBORDES-VALMORE. 77 

"His mother told the whole story to Mme. 
Duchambge, and she came straight as an arrow to 
me, and begged me to summon you, for the poor 
young man wants to kill himself. His forehead 
seems to be on fire ; he says a spider went into his 
ear. 

"You see to what an obscure drama I invite 
you. I hesitated for a few minutes, thinking of 
the poor return my gratitude had made you hither- 
to ; but your heart attracts mine, and I fly, as a 
bird to the sun, with the address of the wounded 
man, No. 10 Rue de Richelieu. Your eyes alone, 
will, I think, have great power over the poor soul 
who wants to go ; but it must be prevented for his 
mother's sake. It is frightful, — frightful to see 
the young die, and to be left behind." 

Her daughters were both dead when she 
wrote this letter ; Undine only a few months 
before. It was thus that Mme. Valmore 
consoled, or shall we say avenged herself 
for her inconsolable griefs, by compassion- 
ating all who suffered as she had done, and 



MEMOIRS OF 



making herself a sister of charity to the 
humblest. 



III. 

We cannot say every thing at once, and 
no sooner have we noticed the prominent 
features of a character, than we perceive 
others which correct and complement these, 
and must also have an important place in a 
speaking likeness of the person. Born in 
the ranks of the people, Mme. Valmore 
remained a plebeian at heart, yet she was 
such without prejudice or premeditation, 
and was far from perpetually insisting on 
barriers and dividing lines. Her relations 
with the princely order, for such she had, 
were pervaded by an indescribable air of 
good-natured mockery. I refer especially 
to the friendship of the then reigning Prince 



MME. DESBORDES-VALMORE. 



79 



Florestan of Monaco, an excellent but weak- 
minded man ; a great patron of the theatre, 
and friend of comedians, tickled by the 
incognito which required that he should be 
addressed as " M. Grimaldi," when he called 
at her house ; who one day asked me in all 
seriousness if I did not think Pigault-Le- 
brun the best historian of France, and of 
whom she once wrote to a lady friend : 
" You know how sincerely I have been and 
am attached to this prince, the most harm- 
less person who ever bore the name." How- 
ever we are not talking of princes in disguise, 
nor kings of Yvetot. Mme. Valmore had 
actual access to genuine dignitaries, and we 
will see how she bore herself with such, and 
of what use she made them. 

She was intimately acquainted, from 1836 
onward, with M. Antoine de Latour, who 
was first tutor, and afterwards private sec- 
retary, to the youngest son of Louis Philippe, 



So 



MEMi )IRS OF 



the Due tie Montpensier. M. de Lutour 
was a university man, and, by nature, rather 
a poet than a professor. He was deeply 
interested in the verses of Mme. Valmore, 
and, through these, in her fate ; for there 
never was a poet whose life and works were 
more entirely identified. Before writing his 
article about her in the " Revue de Paris," 
he requested some particulars concerning 
her past life, her literary predilections, and 
what he called the education of her thought 
and the formation of her genius. She was 
then absent from Paris, and the letter in 
which she replied, or rather excused herself 
from replying, to his inquiries, is too charac- 
teristic not to be quoted here. 

"Lyon-, Oct. 15, 1830. 

"Have you never heard, monsieur, from that 

model woman, Mme. Tastu, who has been good 

enough to penetrate into my ulwurity, how far 

removed I have been from all literary associations, 



MME. DESBORDES-VALMORE. 8 1 

and from the brilliant publications which I have 
been unable to study and enjoy, for the reason 
that my life has been at once unsettled and retired. 
The particulars which you request about that 
unstable and undistinguished life can be very soon 
told. I am condemned to a feverish unrest. 
My life languishes where God wills. I am trav- 
elling toward the other, and trying to lead my 
children safely thither. I should have revelled in 
the study of poets and poetry, but have been fain 
to be content with dreaming of this as of the other 
good things of this world. I shall quit Lyons, a 
few months hence, with all my family, for — I 
know not what place. I do not know how I have 
lived through so many shocks, — and yet I live. 
My fragile existence, monsieur, slipped sorrow- 
fully into this world amid the pealing bells of a 
revolution, in whose whirlpool I was soon to be 
involved. I was born at a churchyard gate, in 
the shadow of a church whose saints were soon to 
be desecrated. Their statues lying overthrown 
amid the grass of the graves were my earliest and 
only friends. Not to dwell too long upon mem- 
ories, which, however charming to myself, would 
6 



82 MEMOIRS OF 



be tedious to you, I enclose a little poem of mine, 
(i My Mother's Hume,' - in which I once endeav- 
ored to express my fond yet sad attachment to 
that native land which I was forced to leave at 
the age of ten, never to see it more, — at least, I 
fear I shall not. You could not write any thing 
about me, monsieur, indulgent as you are, without 
revealing a very ignorant and a very useless crea- 
ture. Can a few songs justify any general interest 
in me, or admit me to a place in a learned book ? 
Monsieur, I do not know any thing and I do not 
learn any thing. Ever since I was sixteen I have 
been subject to fever, and those who love me a 
little have more than once wept for me as dead, 
so slight appeared my hold on life. For a good 
while I was confused and crushed by what I suf- 
fered ; I lived very much alone, although belong- 
ing to a profession outwardly frivolous ; I thought 
every one else was happy, and I could not make 
up my own mind not to be so. I know now that 
others suffer too. I am sadder for this knowledge, 
but very much more resigned. My pity has found 
a new object, my hopes a new goal. They are 
above, and I am trying to follow them." 



MME. DESBORDES-VALMORE. 83 

The reader will have remarked how she 
speaks of Mme. Tastu ; with what deep 
feeling and respect for her solid qualities, 
no less than for that feminine genius which 
had, in its youth, a few poetical notes both 
true and pure. The two extracts which I 
subjoin are also from letters to M. de Latour, 
and will henceforth be inseparable from the 
name of Mme. Tastu. Her place among 
female poets, and the final award of her 
talent, are here succinctly defined : — 

" Lyons, Feb. 7, 1837. 
"... I have told you what I think of Mme. 
Tastu. I love her profoundly. Hers is a pure 
and distinguished soul, which meets a hard fate 
with a pathetic serenity. Two years ago I ad- 
dressed some verses to her which I never dared to 
send. I feel annihilated before these charming 
celebrities, and when I hear my name associated 
with theirs, God knows how my heart quakes." 



S4 



mi:moirs of 



And in a letter from Paris, dated Decem- 
ber 2:3, 1837,— 

" ... I shall miss nothing in the solitude I 
am leaving, but a kind of nearness to Mme. Tastu. 
I love her. She is a constant sufferer, and unfail- 
ingly courageous. A clear woman, whom I ven- 
ture to call my sister" 

M. de Latour being an admirable scholar, 



with a thorough classical training, had 



re- 



marked in Mme. Valmore's verses faults of 
carelessness and weakness, or rather, it may 
be, certain precocities of expression which 
appeared like affectations, and marred, at 
times, the effect of an inspiration which was 
always sincere. He undertook to point 
these out to her, at first in a general way, at 
the close of his very graceful article in the 
" Revue de Paris," afterwards by letter, and 
more in detail. She Avas infinitely obliged 
to him, and expressed her gratitude in terms 
which illustrate once more her uncommon 



J/ME. DESBORDES-VALMORE. 85 

humility, and her very characteristic fashion 
of thinking and speaking from another's 
point of view. And was not her faulty 
originality worth quite as much as a more 
correct beauty? 

"Lyons, Feb. 7, 1837. 
"... You are very skilful at concealing 
faults, or inventing excuses for them, and I thank 
you for it with tears in my eyes, for there is no 
reason why what I write should not be monstrously 
incoherent, and full of improper and ill-arranged 
words. If I thought seriously about this, I should 
be utterly ashamed ; but, monsieur, have I the 
time? I never see a denizen of that literary 
world which forms taste and purines language. I 
am my own sole judge, and I know nothing, so 
where is my security? Once in my life, but a 
long while ago, a man of great talent was a little 
fond of me ; enough so to point out certain unsus- 
pected blunders and imprudences, in the verses 
which I was beginning to collect. But that clear- 
sighted and courageous affection just flitted across 
my life and vanished. I have never learned any 



86 



MEMi HRS OF 



thing since then, and, shall I say it, monsieur? I 
have not desired to learn any thing. I am climb- 
ing, as best I may, to the goal of an existence in 
which I speak very much oftcner to God than to the 
world. You understand this, and have made it 
my defence against the taste which I have so often 
and so innocently offended. Who else will ever 
fulfil this task as you have done? I could nut do 
it, were I to try with all my might ; for, in order 
to justify myself, I should have to plunge again 
into times which I dread to remember. Yours 
was the quiet courage needful for such an effort, 
and I heard you as I would hear my last judge. 
I heard you, monsieur, for they read mo your 
analysis of those faulty and even useless books ( if 
any thing on earth is useless), which you read so 
patiently, setting your heart and your wit to the 
task of extracting therefrom something to love, to 
praise, to pity ! 

" If I should some day see you, — as I sincerely 
hope I may, — will you have the patience and the 
brave honesty to inform me just what is bad and 
what is good, in a style which I cannot criticise 
for myself? Oh yes, you will enlighten me, it* 



MME. DESBORDES-VALMORE. 87 

that is possible, and you will sec that I deserve, 
at least, by my own sincerity, that first and rarest 
of favors, — truth." 

And in a letter from Paris, dated Novem- 
ber 20, 1837,— 

" Mark whatever is repugnant to you in the 
verses which I have just written for you. I do 
not see clearly. A little light, if you please ! " 

And once again, in a letter of December 
23, 1837,— 

" I come out of my fog once more and make 
an effort to reach you. I have thought that the 
best way of thanking you for your advice would 
be to profit by it, and so I have carried your light 
wherever I could, and corrected a part of the 
faults you pointed out. Not all, however ; the 
irregularity of the verses, and their arrangement in 
pairs, now of masculines and now of feminines, 
and subsequently with the two kinds intermingled 
according to my fancy, I could not alter without 
injury to the sense. For the future, however, I 
will be extremely careful. 



88 MEMOIRS OF 



" I shall not copy here all that I have tried to 
improve. If ever my new volume finds a place, 
— its true place would be that of a drop of water 
in the sea, — you will read it all, will you not, 
before it is published? You promised me."' 

But M. de Latour was to Mme. Valmore 
far more than a critical adviser. By virtue 
of his position and his character, he was 
also an intercessor and a channel of favor. 
A man of fine and gentle nature, who famil- 
iarized the court with poetry, he was the 
translator of Silvio Pcllico, and not unlike 
the latter in his habits of heart and mind. 
Having once experienced his genuine good- 
ness, Mme. Valmore did not hesitate to 
appeal to him at every crisis. Lyons, where 
she was then living, was the centre of trou- 
ble and woe. She herself called it " that 
scourged city,'' and pictured its condition 
vividly to M. de Latour. 



MME. DESBORDES-VALMORE. 89 

"Lyoxs, Feb. 7, 1837. 
' ' My lot has been so hard -of late that I could 
scarcely take breath. Judge for yourself! All 
the miseries of Lyons are added to my own, — 
twenty or thirty thousand workmen begging daily 
for a little bread, a little fire, a garment, lest they 
die. Can you realize, monsieur, this universal 
and insurmountable despair which appeals to one 
in God's name, and makes one ashamed of daring 
to have food and fire and two garments, when 
these poor creatures have none? I see it all, and 
it paralyzes me." 

In 1834, at the time of the great insurrec- 
tion of republicans and working-men, which 
she had witnessed, and of which she had felt 
herself a victim, matters had been even 
worse. She had then addressed a sort of 
canticle to Queen Marie- Amalie, appealing 
to her as a woman and a mother : but this 
touching plaint, which was printed in the 
volume entitled " Pauvres Fleurs," had, in 
some sort, the air of an old-time ballad ; it 



9 o 



MEMOIRS OF 



seemed to belong to the days of Queen 
Blanche, and the poet was disguised as a 
trouvere. 

The stanzas which I quote below have a 
very different and far more poignant charac- 
ter. They were written under the immedi- 
ate impression of the atrocious spectacle she 
was witnessing, and which the cynicism of 
civil war renders the same in every age, 
whether in the days of the League or in our 
own. I have made out these unfinished 
verses from rough-drafts in her note-books ; 
and I give them as I found them, in frag- 
ments, as befits the subject. But what 
cries ! What indignation ! That only is a 
truly brave and strong compassion which is 
thus mingled with wrath, and is capable, at 
need, of heart-wrung accents like these. 
The leaf which I transcribe is like a page 
torn from the tragedies of D'Aubigne. 



MME. DESBORDES-VALM-ORE. 91 



LYONS, 1834. 

We cannot even bury these dead of ours ; 
Too great the cost of priestly funerals: 
So they lie stark, all torn with cruel balls, 

Awaiting coffins, crosses, and remorse ! 

Now is the assassin king ! He stalks to fetch 
The price of blood from out the treasury ; 

He slays, in passing, some defenceless wretch, 
Yet still insatiate with blood is he. 

God sees him. God will gather like bruised flowers 
The souls of babes and women who to him 
Are fled, — the air with outraged souls 1 is dim, 

On earth men wade in blood, — Merciful Powers ! 

The spirit haunts its desecrated corse : 
But all too dear are priestly funerals ; 
So our dead lie all torn with cruel balls, 

Awaiting coffins, crosses, and remorse. 

Wear black, my sisters ! — Weep as ne'er before ; 

They will not let us take our slain away ; 

They make one heap of their dishonored clay ; 
And, God, thou knowest that never arms they bore ! 

1 This verse recalls one of D'Aubigne's about the massa- 
cres of St. Bartholomew, and the sanguinary exhalations of 

carnage, — 

A l'lieure que le ciel fume de sang et d'arues. 

The image common to the two verses is simple and sublime. 



92 MEMOIRS OF 



As I have before said, one must not expect 
of Mme. Valmore a logical sequence of 
ideas, nor any system whatever. Her heart 
was her constant guide. Her sympathies 
carried her away. 

On her return from Lyons to Paris, 
being already under obligations to M. 
de Latour, she presently availed herself 
of the circumstance, to recommend to his 
notice a poet-mechanic of Rouen, a linen- 
printer by trade, and, in by-gone days, 
a rhymester. This modest and worthy 
man, Thodore Lebreton by name, was in 
feeble health, but found friends and patrons 
in high places, and rose to be assistant- 
librarian of the city library at Rouen. In 
addressing his essays to M. de Latour with 
a request for a dedication, Mme. Valmore 
began by the following apologue, after the 
manner of the Persian poet Saadi, some of 
whose works she had read, and whom she 
professed to adore. 



MME. DESBORDES-VALMORE. 93 

"Monsieur, — I have read in a book that a 
poor bird which had been battered and beaten to the 
ground by a tempest, was once picked up by a chari- 
table and powerful creature, who healed his broken 
wing as God himself might have done, after which 
the bird returned to the home of the birds in the 
sky, and among the storms. 

" The healer heard no more from him, and said 
to himself, Where is gratitude? 

' ' But one day he remarked a sharp tapping at 
his window, and opened it. God had answered 
his inquiry. The bird had brought another 
wounded bird along, dragging his wing, and at 
the point of death. 

" On what heart was the image of the benefac- 
tor more deeply graven than on that which had 
seemed oblivious ? " 

So utterly graceful was the poet's fashion 
of presenting another poet. Happily it was 
also a poet whom she addressed ; for it ap- 
peared that the preface to these humble 
Essays, which was probably not by the 
author of the verses, was unnecessarily red- 



94 



MEMOIRS OF 



olent of the jiroUtaire life to which they 
referred, and smacked a little of social doc- 
trines which were reputed dangerous. But 
when M. de Latour gently advised her of 
the fact, it was Mme. Valmore's turn to be 
astonished. 

" I really do not understand what there is 
wrong about that Preface, of which the work- 
man is as innocent as I myself. I was told 
that it was equally simple and just, and on 
this ground I drew your attention to it. Thank 
you for having seen only the suffering laborer 
amid tendencies of which I know nothing." 

In the delicate and affectionate relation 
subsisting between herself and M. de Latour, 
I might remark other recommendations and 
pressing intercessions of which she became 
the medium ; a few words of deep and 
reverent sympathy for Queen Marie-Amalie. 
on the occasion of the death of the Due 
d'Orleans : and also, but earlier, another 



MME. DESBORDES-VALMORE. 95 

impetuous cry for pardon, uttered just after 
the chief leader of the insurrection of May 
12, 1839, had been condemned to death. 

" Oh, sir, for the love of the king and the 
queen, do not let such a thing be ! Speak ! Sue 
for pardon ! You do not know what that blood 
will cost. Monsieur, I press your hands and con- 
jure you in the name of that august and loving 
mother, that mercy may be shown by those in 
power, and quickly. My prayer bears witness to 
my love for the queen, and my profound reverence 
for your own character. 

" Your very humble and devoted servant, 

" Marceline Valmoke. 
"July 13, 1839-" 

The date indicates Barbes, who had been 
condemned the night before by the Court of 
Peers. So true it is that when intercession 
was to be made for another, she never con- 
sidered herself. " She works with a will," 
said M. Martin of the Nord, when she put 
in her repeated pleas for him, two or three 
at a time. 



9 6 



MEMOIRS OF 



She may be said to have received from 
nature, or from Heaven, a vocation, and, as 
it were, a special gift for the help and de- 
liverance of prisoners. It was a part of her 
religion, and had been so since childhood. 
In the valley of the Scarpe, when she was 
very small, she saw up in the high tower of 
a donjon an old prisoner, who extended his 
hands to her, and she set out the self-same 
day, with her brother, to walk to Paris and 
request his release, which, they had told her, 
could only be obtained there. The two 
were brought back at night to their anxious 
mother, who did not know what had become 
of them ; but Mine. Valmore remained faith- 
ful, as long as she lived, to the spirit of this 
childish adventure. Every prisoner, every 
captive, no matter what his cause or party, 
was sacred to her. In 1834 she addressed 
some verses to M. de Peyronnet, then a 
prisoner at Ham. Subsequently she ad- 



MME. DESBORDES-VALMORE. 97 

dressed some to another prisoner at Ham, — 
to the prisoner merely. At Lyons she often 
visited, in the prisons of Perroche, those 
who were detained on account of the various 
riots and insurrections. She exercised over 
them her oavii peculiar power of sympathy 
and gift of consolation, assisted by a voice 
which was maternal to the lowly, and sisterly 
to unfortunates of a higher class. A sufferer 
appealed to her by his very misfortunes. If, 
in her private prayers and spiritual exercises, 
she allowed no breastwork of authority 
between God and herself, she readily en- 
tered into relations with the priesthood 
when there was a question of succor to be 
obtained, or a united effort for deliverance. 

But nowhere did her pathetic words, her 
plaintive bird-notes oftener echo, nowhere 
did she beat her wings more wildly, than 
against the gratings of the castle of Doul- 
lens, where the strange republic of 1848, 



9 8 



MEMOIRS OF 



which succeeded in shooting, imprisoning, 

or transporting all the real republicans, and 
leaving itself with only royalists at its head, 
had shut up the obstinate and indomitable 
Citizen Raspail. Political questions quite 
apart, Mme. Valmore saw in him only a 
benefactor of the people and a martyr in the 
cause of humanity, and her thoughts and 
good wishes never deserted him in exile and 
banishment. The austere yet tender friend- 
ship which she inspired in that stoical 
soul was one of the triumphs of her sweet 
genius. We shall refer to it again, and cite 
with pleasure some precious testimony con- 
cerning it. 1 

I hasten to return to the family letters, 

1 This passage obtained for M. Saintc-Beuve the interest- 
ing note which follows, which still retains its black seal, and 
the device, in memory of M. Raspail'a career, of " Vincula 
decora," surrounded by chains. "Monsieur, thanks lor your 
courage. Not every free-thinker has obtained such a testi- 
monial in his lifetime. 

"F. V. Raspail." 

Arcueil-Caciia.v, May 7, L869. 



MME. DESBORDES-VALMORE. 99 

which will give natural occasion for a few 
more passing remarks on the character and 
the mind of this loving and much-tried 
woman. Resuming at the point where we 
left it the correspondence with her brother, 
at Douai, we meet once more with piteous 
troubles, and humble wants relieved, and 
first of all with that modest pension, which 
she had begun by appropriating with a sort 
of shame, but which she now considers a 
blessing. 

"Octorer 26, 1847. 

"Two days ago I received the quarterly pay- 
ment, long so painful to my indomitable pride, 
but which I have lived to welcome as if heaven 
had opened to relieve our misfortunes. 

" However, let us not be cast down. It is 
easier to resign one's self to indigence if one thrills 
at the sight of trees and sunshine, and the pleasant 
daylight, and surely hopes to see again those whose 
loss one mourns. 

' ' Just now I could hardly get twenty francs for 



100 



MEMOIRS OF 



a volume. Music, politics, commerce, frightful 
poverty, and equally frightful luxury, absorb 
every thing. 

"My dear husband asks that you will pray for 
him in the name of the Scotch pontoons. That 
will win a hearing with God." 

"January 12, 1848. 
"Undine is still immured in her boarding- 
school. If I want to embrace her, I have to go 
there. I am going now, — taking advantage of 
the unusual sunshine, and I embrace you on her 
behalf, who is so industrious and so good. Hers 
is a hard profession ; but, dear Felix, we have no 
dowry for our angels, and what are grace and wit 
and wisdom in times like these?" 

The character of Undine was one source 
of anxiety to her mother. The natures and 
habits of the two were unlike. The silence 
and self-restraint of Undine seemed like a 
tacit reproach to the raptures and the anxie- 
ties which her mother stood ready daily to 
lavish on all who required them. Undine 



MME. DESBORDES-VALMORE. 



pursued her own distinct line of life, both in 
friendship and in study. Her mother called 
her " our dear, learned lady," thereby indi- 
cating that she believed her more accom- 
plished than herself. In Undine's former 
vacations, she had hardly been able to enjoy 
her society at all, a fact which she good- 
naturedly bewailed in the following passage 
from a letter to M. Richard at Rouen, who 
had married her niece. 

" August 22, 1847. 
" Undine awarded to our affection twenty-four 
hours of her vacation, after a confinement which 
had worn on her very much. She then went, 
three days since, to Tarare, to sleep and breathe 
her fill of mountain air. I said not a word against 
this resolution, seeing how languid she was, and 
having only a stifling room to give her, and less 
than ever of that quiet gayety which promotes the 
health and moral well-being of the young. I 
know by sad experience that these sensitive young 
souls need either happiness or the dream of it, and 
that they should be fed, from the first, on unal- 



102 



MEMi VRS OF 



terable indulgence. You know, besides, that all 
our sweet Undine's dreams are so high and pure, 
that one may resign with entire confidence the 
pleasure of her presence. To enjoy what she was 
not enjoying would be a very imperfect satisfaction 
to me, and I do not feel the energy to love simply 
for my own delight. The truth is, my dear 
Richard, I have no happiness now save that of 
others. Mine is shattered." 

The storm of February, 1848, burst upon 
France. Mme. Valmore could not refrain 
from applauding. She did not reason : she 
followed her instincts. She felt with the 
people, having, as I have said, a popular 
soul. Cold logic, — the prevision and com- 
prehension of general truths, — these are 
not to be expected of her. She had always 
been on the side of the suffering and op- 
pressed ; she was so still, on the day when 
she dreamed that the people had triumphed 
and was free. She sang her pawn, — 
addressing it to her brother Felix. 



MME. BE SB ORDES- VA LMORE. 



103 



"March 1, 1848. 

" The storm was so sublime one could not be 
afraid. We did not think of ourselves, but we 
panted for the people who were dying for us. 
No ! you never can have seen any thing finer, 
simpler, grander ; but I am too much overcome 
by admiration and emotion, to describe it to you. 
It would have killed me if that adorable populace 
could have doubted that it had my blessing. Tell 
this to no one but the Virgin ; for it is as true as 
my love for her, and my sisterly affection for 
you. 

"My dear husband lias no place. And they 
say my little pension is suppressed, but I have no 
time to think of that. It would disturb the ten- 
derest rapture a soul was ever allowed to feel. 
Religion and its divine ministers bend over the 
wounded to bless them, — over the dead to envy 
their martyrdom. 

" Lift your hat, on my behalf, when you pass 
the church of Notre Dame, and lay upon its 
threshold the first spring-flowers you find." 



Nevertheless the consequences were not 



io4 



MEMOIRS OF 



long in making themselves felt. After the 
liberty-trees had been blessed, and the 
honeymoon of the republic was over, came 
Rabelais' quarter of an hour. Every revo- 
lution brings a holiday alike to high and 
low, and every holiday involves a deficit and 
subsequent penury. 

" To Mme. Derains. 

" . . . 1818. 
" The sorry truth is that I have no money at 
all; that I have just received my tax-bill, and 
have not received an order nor any information 
whatever about my quarterly payment, which fell 
due five days ago. What shall I do? I know- 
not a door where I can knock. Events seem 
everywhere to have written — Distress." 

I shall continue to trace the course of this 
interesting life by means of extracts from 
letters written subsequently to 1848. Those 
from which I shall (mote hereafter were 
mostly written by Mme. Valmore to her 



MME. DESBORDES-VALMORE. 105 

relatives at Rouen. A single happy event 
diversified the uniform sadness of their tone. 
It was the marriage of her daughter Undine, 
destined to so early and sad an end. 

" Decembek 24, 1849. 

" If your affection, my dear Richard, makes 
you anxious about us and our silence, it is quite 
the same with ourselves in all that concerns you ; 
and, although I know not where to begin, I shall 
steal an hour from the night to write to you. It 
is Christmas-eve, dear Richard, when the destinies 
of this poor world and your own might be changed, 
if our Saviour could but hear his poor cricket, as 
she kneels upon her humble hearth, — a hearth 
where there is not much fire save that of her own 
loving, anxious heart. 

" I embrace you tenderly, and so does my dear 
husband. I am sorry to say that he is really ill 
with anxiety, and Undine has been very seriously 
so. She is so fragile that my life is one long 
worry about the dear creature, who is needing 
entire rest. For myself, I work like a day 
laborer, and only pause to cry, to love, to pray." 



MEMOIRS OF 



" February 25, 1850. 

" Life certainly is a warfare for all of us. My 
dear Valmore is sick. He is stronger than I, but 
less pliant to misfortune ; and, although he is very 
ingenious about contriving occupations to enliven 
his solitude, nevertheless this barren solitude preys 
upon him ; he works himself into a fever. . . . 

" I can do no more to-day than press your hand 
most lovingly, and delay the departure of the little 
package, which has been ready for three days. 

" I delay it on account of the miserable jjostage. 
Dear Lord, has it come to this, that I must check 
the outpourings of a heart which loves, and always 
will love its own so dearly?" 

Her sister Eugenie, at Rouen, fell mor- 
tally ill, and her death was daily expected. 
Now appeared one of the peculiarities of 
Mme. Valmore's religion. We have seen 
her credulous, and even superstitious, cling- 
ing fondly to the legends of her native 
place ; but there was one point on which 
she never wavered. If she was a Catholic 



MME. DESBORDES-VALMORE. 



107 



in imagination, hers was, if I may so speak, 
a strongly individualized Catholicism. She 
suffered no personal intervention, and in- 
sisted that the peace of the dying should be 
respected. She wrote to her niece, Euge- 
nie's daughter, to be very careful not to 
alarm her mother at the supreme moment. 

" Sept. 5, 1850. 

"I wait with the utmost anxiety for a letter, 
and your silence alarms me. My dear Canaille, I 
seem to see you all about my sister, ready with 
your filial ministrations, as angels might console a 
saint. I feel a serene certainty that Heaven will 
bless so sweet a soul, but what I suffer is inexpres- 
sible. It is a hundred times worse since I came 
back. It would be far less terrible to see her. 

" I have no fear that you will commit the im- 
prudence, I might say the impiety, of which cold 
hearts are sometimes guilty, — I mean that you 
will attempt to remind your mother of her duties. 
Her duties are fulfilled toward God and man. 
Let us spare ourselves the pain of having wounded 
her pure and holy heart." 



IOS MEMOIRS OF 



And after Eugenie's death : — 

" The will of God is terrible, when it is accom- 
plished upon beings so weak and fond as we." 

But her dark and lowering sky suddenly 
brightened in an unhoped-for manner. 

"January 1-1, 1S51. 

" Undine is going to be married ! She will be 
a madame in a few days. This is a mutual 
attraction, and every thing about it is honorable, 
serious, and tender. The bridegroom is an advo- 
cate in the Court of Appeals, and representative 
from the Sarthe. This very unexpected event 
took place on Christmas-eve. 

" I will write you the particulars as soon as I 
have time to take breath, amid the crowding cares 
and the terrible pecuniary embarrassments by 
which I am distracted. Our dear Undine's future 
is secured, and it is all suitable, but you can 
judge what a time of trial it is for her family, — 
so poor, and yet so proud ! " 

It was a kind of gleam of happiness. 



MME. DESBORDES-VALMORE. 1 09 

Mme. Valmore was deceived about her 
daughter's state of health. Neither she nor 
Undine herself knew how seriously the 
latter's chest had been affected for years, 
and that only the most careful regimen had 
been able to arrest and ameliorate the rav- 
ages of disease. Marriage* pregnancy, and 
the young mother's determination to nurse 
her own babq, were soon followed by irrep- 
arable consequences. But there was a 
season of oblivion, of deep and quiet happi- 
ness in the country, on M. Langlais' estate 
at Saint-Denis d'Anjou, where Mme. Val- 
more passed some time with her daughter. 
The very spirit of their rich and vegetative 
out-door life, amid farmers and husbandmen, 
breathes and laughs without restraint in the 
following passage from one of Undine's 
letters to her brother : — 

" 1851 . . . Here we forget every thing. We 
complain conventionally ', but without bitterness. 



MEMOIRS OF 



We sleep, we eat ; there are no bells. We wake 
in the morning and ask, 'Is it breakfast-time?' 
We take donkey-rides, and presently return with 
the inquiry, ' Is it dinner-time? ' There are flow- 
ers, there is grass, and an odor of growing things 
which overpowers you, whether you will or no. 
There is an atmosphere of insouciance which lulls 
you, and reconciles you even to pain. Why are 
you not here? You would enjoy it so much! 
You would help us to translate Horace in an ele- 
gant and philosophic style like this, — 

' Cueillons le jour. Buvons l'heure qui coule, 
Ne perdons pas le temps a nous laver les mains. 1 
Hatons-iious d'admirer le pigeon qui roucoule, 
Car nous le mangerons demain." 

"No matter if a plural does rhyme with a 
singular ! It is a license to which we are recon- 
ciled by the mildness of the temperature. We 
are becoming real Angevins, — mollified to quote 
Caesar, or somebody else." 

So jested " our dear learned lady " on the 
eve of her death. How keenly we feel that 

i A parody on " Carpe Diem." 



MME. DESBORDES-VALMORE. Ill 

all this young creature had ever needed was 
sunshine and an easy life ! Why did com- 
fort and happiness come to her so late, — 
too late % 

In a letter to her son, written the next 
year, Mme. Valmore describes in her own 
fashion this rural and provincial life. 

" October, 1852. 
" Yesterday we made the tour of the town 
with Langlais (I think they call it a town). Our 
calls are all returned. In these queer little 
houses I have seen very pretty little ladies and 
very pretty children, baskets of fruit and flowers 
everywhere. Yes, God is in everyplace, — par- 
ticularly here where the silence is unbroken by the 
sound of literary or political wrangling. The talk 
is all of the vintage and the wheat-crop and of 
hens who lay continually. It is not exactly 
Spain. — of which by the way you sent me a 
charming souvenir, in the dove-like strains which 
you had translated so feelingly, 1 — but it is peace 

1 She alludes to an impassioned and mystical poem, by the 
poetess Carolina Coronada, entitled " El Amor de los Amores," 
which M. Hippolyte Valmore had translated. 



MEMOIRS OF 



and freedom, with no ringing at the door, no 
pianos, and no Greek caps in the attic. Here 
all goes smoothly, — at least on the surface of the 
meadows where I stray. Here is melancholy, not 
of the luxurious kind, and not too poignant 
neither. Poets do not build nests here, and tur- 
tle-doves eat like ogres." 

But during this , second autumn in the 
country Undine's condition became alarm- 
ing ; and the mother's eye could not be 
deceived, although she hoped against 
hope. 

" For the rest, my dear son, I must needs enter 
into some sad particulars, and confess that my 
mother's heart is perpetually wrung, — that twenty 
times a day my sight is dimmed by terror about 
her. Her countenance is so changeful ; she lias 
so strange an appetite and such a horror of walk- 



ing ! She is so shy even in her confidences ! It is 
as if her heart were the home of thousands of 
birds, who do not sing in concert, but fear and 
shun one another. She is always gentle, but so 
easily agitated." 



-+ 



MME. DESBORDES-VALMORE. 113 

These apprehensions were only too soon 
justified, and, before many months had 
elapsed, this mingling of joy and anxiety 
was changed into bitter and inconsolable 
grief. On the 12th of February, 1853, 
Mme. Valmore was ministering to her dying 
daughter at Passy, and for many weeks 
afterward she was overpowered by a strange, 
weird sense of unspeakable desolation, an 
obstinate craving for solitude, a kind of 
chronic dread which admitted no hope, no 
ray of alleviation. 1 

1 M. Sainte-Beuve refrained from publishing the following 
letter, which was addressed to him upon the fatal day : " Among 
them all, you only, I think, can guess the greatness of my grief. 
I thank you for the tenderness which enables you to do so. I 
thank you for the tear of pity you have shed for me, and for 
the pang her loss has caused your kindly heart. I feel it. You 
knew her well; you gave her real sunshine; you loved that 
innocent smile of hers ; it was on her lips when she passed 
away ! Yes, I thank you in her name, — sweet dove ! — and 
in my own, and I thank you because you were her friend. 
Allow me to sign myself, Yours, 

" Marceline Desbordes-Valmore." 

This letter is postmarked Feb. 18. Undine had just died, 
8 



II 4 



MEMOIRS OF 



"To Mme. Derains. 

" OCTOBEB 1. I - 

" I cannot in the sincerity of my heart say any 
thing decisive about the condition of my dear 
child. I pass in a day from hope to fear, from 
smiles to tears. As usual, I hide every thing and 
only obey my affectionate instincts. If I were 
free to follow my maternal ones, I should change 
the regimen adopted ; and it seems to me as if I 
might long ago have restored a healthful equi- 
librium to that precious frame, which seems a 
prey to hopeless waste, to a strange and never to 
be satisfied hunger, despite four abundant meals a 
day, and sound and frequent sleep. I have an 
idea that the coating of the stomach and bowels is 
destroyed l by the water she has drunk, and the 
medicines, now allopathic, now homoeopathic (my 
spelling is just as it happens, and so, alas ! is her 
health). But since I cannot assume any author- 
ity over that interesting mind, at once resolute 
and depressed, I merely gaze at her with torture 
in my heart, and pray without knowing what I 
say ; for indeed I am terribly anxious. 

1 She is popular, also, in her ideas of medicine, ami lias 
theories peculiar to herself. 



*" 



4 



MME. DESBORDES-VALMORE. 115 

" Why do I not write you? Because it is so 
hard for me to write just now. To write what I 
think, is to betray myself. To write any thing else 
is to deceive ; and that must not be between us. 

' ' All our surroundings are truly pleasant. 
The air, the sky, the trees, would be enough with- 
out the comfortable and cheerful house ; but I 
seem to be in a dream, and I can realize nothing 
but the pressure of an anxiety which poisons all." 

And again from Passy : — 

" December 30, evening. 
" I cannot induce her to see you or any one. 
It might do both her and me good, — but no, — 
silence and the retirement of the cloister ! " 

These souls that ripen early often experi- 
ence when life is slipping from them an 
intense and deep-seated feeling of rebellion, 
a last struggle with fate, a sense of ineffable 
regret for that of which they knew too little 
before it passed away for ever. This late 
but vehement refusal to enter the impene- 
trable shadows is not uncommon. 



I I 6 MEMOIRS OF 



. . . Atqne inimica refngit 
In nemus umbriferum. . . . 

We do well to draw a veil over such 
things when they are past, lest the living 
utterly despair. I have only now to add the 
heart-rending but always humble and sub- 
missive moan of her whom I do not hesitate 
to call the Mater Dolorosa of poetry. 

To her niece, — 

" April 1, 1853. 

"I thank you, clear Camille, for your tender 
and compassionate friendship. You understand 
the wound I have received. It is still bleeding. 
I dare no more than yourself to dwell upon the 
terrible suffering which is over at last. To speak 
of it overcomes me. God will perhaps give me 
grace to comprehend it. Ah, Camille, I am very 
unfortunate ! 

"I have no moral power left. I dare not 
write, especially to those I love ; for I cannot lie, 
and the tale is too sad to tell." 

" August 13, 1S33. 
"... In short we cannot have what we wish. 



* 



MME. DESBORDES-VALMORE. 117 

A hidden force compels us to all sorts of sacrifices, 
and that force is irresistible. 

"Paris, which has devoured our substance and 
our hopes, becomes more and more uninhabitable 
to us ; and the only desirable thing would seem to 
be some quiet provincial nook, where we might 
hide our ruined lives and rest after our vain 
labors. But even such a change is encompassed 
with difficulties. It would be an uprooting , and 
I am languid with grief." 

" December 3, 1853. 
" I have very good reasons for knowing that 
money troubles influence the affections much, and 
are never considered justifiable." 

"March 26, 1854. 

" We are going to leave our fifth-story rooms, 
perhaps to climb to a sixth. One cannot have 
even an attic for less than twelve or fourteen hun- 
dred francs. This world of ours grows dizzy. 

" What has become of that excellent M. de 
J — ? Ruined in all his hopes, his is another 
existence swallowed up in the fearful rush of what 
is called civilization, but is very like chaos." 



IlS MEMOIRS OF 



" September 6, 1854. 
" The last result of misfortune is to sow seeds 
of discord in families which happiness would have 
united. "When it becomes necessary for each mem- 
ber to work hard in order to escape absolute indi- 
gence, the wings of the soul are folded, and 
soaring is postponed to a future day." 

In her letters to her friend, Mme Derahis, 
she recurs to the misery of seeking lodg- 
ings, and vividly illustrates the moral dis- 
comfort and confusion of thought which 
result from perpetual removals. 

" What you say, my dear friend, is the sum 
and substance of volumes that I feel. They will 
remain unwritten, like seeds put away in closets, 
which dry up and are never sown. For instance, 
your dread of the transition from old to new 
habits attendant on frequent removals from place 
to place. Why, that is my life ! The result of 
it all is a sort of fever which tortures the memory, 
and causes the days to pass sadly, far from the 
places which we love because we have loved much 



MME. DESBORDES-VALMORE. 119 

in them. Have I never told you how often I go 
to look for something in some particular room, 
and cannot find it? And then my misery begins. 
'Ah, no, it is in a closet, — how stupid I am! 
That closet was at Bordeaux. Or perhaps I am 
thinking of the wardrobe at Lyons.' I am 
assailed and importuned by or perhapses. I have 
actually shed tears over the memories they have 
awakened." 

She proceeds to express a modest wish 
destined never to be realized. 

" It actually terrifies me to think that I must 
go out to-morrow and Saturday, at about one 
o'clock whether sick or well. If you would only 
come ! These are the times when my five to 
twenty stories appear like Pyrenees minus the 
flowers. To lodge on the second floor ! High 
privilege of the moderately ambitious ! Can I 
never aspire to that ? " 

This pleasing and sensible desire, shared 
by so many families, was never any thing 
more than a dream with her. She had 



120 



M1CM0IRS OF 



always to be unmaking and rebuilding her 
nest. She changed lodgings fourteen times 
in twenty years. The new Paris then in 
process of erection, whose first splendors 
she beheld, was not an auspicious asylum 
for her. .The great forward movements of 
civilization come like storms. What are 
swallows' nests to them? 



IV. 

It remains for me to call attention to por- 
tions of Mme. Valmore's correspondence 
which contain tones a little more varied, — 
though still I shall insist upon the funda- 
mental note, — and also to collect the most 
important of those personal testimonials 
which this tender and sympathetic soul did 
not fail of receiving even in her life. 

On her return from Italy and during the 
earlier portion of her residence in Paris, 






*- 



MME. DESBORDES-VALMORE. 121 

Mme. Valmore revisited her beloved Flan- 
ders. She passed through Douai, where 
she sorrowfully embraced her brother and 
realized her past and present sorrows with 
unwonted keenness, and thence proceeded 
to Brussels, where M. Valmore had taken 
a new engagement. Her brief stay in this 
place, during which she wrote some charm- 
ing joint letters to her three children in 
Paris, restored to her a portion of her youth, 
and served, in spite of all drawbacks, agree- 
ably to divert her mind and enliven her 
imagination, while affording her compara- 
tive leisure. There are brilliant flashes 
here and there which plainly show that all 
this exquisite intelligence needed for a full 
appreciation of art, literature properly so 
called, and whatever constitutes elegant 
culture, was a little space for study and 
reflection. Thus, to her son who was then 
studying painting, she wrote : ■ — 



MEMOIRS OF 



•• Wednesd w. 21st. 
" Yesterday, October 20, your father received 
your letter and the enclosed drawing. He thanks 
you for it and he and I both share your enthu- 
siasm for Michael Angelo. What a happy place 
this world is to one who possesses the faculty of 
admiration, at once the humblest and the proudest 
of all ! It consoles one for all sorts of miseries, 
and gives wings to poverty, enabling it to soar 
above disdainful wealth." 

" Brussels, Oct. 26, 1810, noon. 

" I meant to have done some work here in my 
solitude, but it is like the solitude of Paris. Hob- 
goblins come in by the key-hole. 

"... I am very glad I brought your ' Ger- 
many.' Every line of Mme. de StaeTs serves 
farther to enlighten my ignorance ; and my 
admiration is always affectionate. "What a 
genius ! But then, what a heart ! How good is 
the belief in immortality which gives me the hope 
of seeing even her, just as I once dreamed of her. 

" On the other hand, the more I read, the farther 
I penetrate into the shadows which have hidden 
our great lights from me, the less I dare to write : 



MME. DESBORDES-VALMORE. 



I2 3 



I am smitten with terror, — I am like a glow- 
worm in the sun." 

And here is another letter which seems 
literally to ring with all the merry uproar 
that pervades the fine Flemish towns on 
festive days. 

" Brussels, Nov. 1, 1840, 10 o'clock p. m. 
" I write, my dears, with all the bells of Brus- 
sels pealing about me, responsively for the Saints 
and the Dead. Nothing at Paris can give the 
slightest idea of these festivities, which fill earth 
and air with commotion. The churches we vis- 
ited were full of women with long black silk veils 
on their heads which fell as low as the feet. 
These churches are so Italian in character that I 
would give any thing to have you see them. 
Hippolyte would be enchanted. To-day we saw 
the black virgin with the child Jesus also black 
like the mother. These Madonnas wring my 
heart with a thousand reminiscences. They are 
nothing in the way of art, but they are so asso- 
ciated with my earliest and sweetest faiths that I 
positively adore their stiff, pink-lined veils and 



MEMOIRS OF 



wreaths of perennial flowers, made of cambric so 
stout that all the winds of heaven would never 
cause a leaf to flutter. I must now tell you about 
the picture-gallery of the Due d'Aremberg which 
we visited yesterday. What serene splendor ! 
What a glorious solitude ! There were hosts of 
pictures by Rubens, among others his portrait by 
his own hand, and those of his two wives looking 
as if they were alive. You could almost see their 
lips move. This is indeed the home of Painting. 
You feel that she is worshipped here with a pro- 
found and inexpressible adoration. And now 
what will you say when I tell you that we have 
seen here the real head of the Laoeoon, purchased 
by this same Due d'Aremberg tor lt>0,000 
francs? If I were to live a thousand years, I 
could never forget this marvellous thing. It 
haunts me, — a head bowed with grief, eloquent 
of bitter reproaches. It was found by some Vene- 
tians in a canal, a great while after the discovery 
of the magnificent group the genuine head of 
which had never been identified. It is heart-rend- 
ing, and one almost seems to hear a cry issuing 
from the lips which arc parted in a spasm of mor- 
tal suffering. The fact that ail the teeth are visi- 



MME. DESBORDES-VALMORE. 125 

ble, although there is no grimace, adds to the 
expression of torture. It is not the head of an 
old man, as in the group, but of one in the prime 
of life, — say forty to forty-five years old. It 
weeps, as I never saw marble weep before, as you 
would think a father ought to weep when unable 
to rescue his sons. Hippolyte himself had 
remarked that they looked very young for the 
children of so old a man. If he could see this, 
he would be delighted by the correspondence in 
age. The sons must be about fifteen years old. 
But why do I attempt to describe it ? : My words 

1 In the doubt awakened in my mind by these rather singular 
assertions, I applied to a friend of mine, a man of taste and 
learning, who wrote me as follows : " The head of the Laocoon 
certainly belongs to the body, and has never been disputed. 
That of the Due d'Aremberg could not be substituted for it. 
It has been supposed, however, that it belonged to another 
similar group. There are several repetitions — repliche, as the 
Italians say — of most of the famous groups and statues. Nei- 
ther is the head in DAremberg's collection that of a much 
younger man. lam aware that it is customary to regard it as 
a work of the Renaissance. Its exceedingly pathetic expres- 
sion is unlike the manner of the ancients. For my own part, I 
think it an antique. Both of the heads appear to me those of 
men in the prime of manhood. I should be inclined to pro- 
nounce the D'Aremberg head superior to that of the Vatican 
in point of expression and execution. There is nothing restored 
in the latter group, except the right arm of the father, and an 



MEMOIRS OF 



are so pale that I had better return to those every- 
day matters which I thoroughly understand. 
Your last joint letter was as sweet a trio, God 
knows, as I ever want to hear : it breathed of har- 
mony and hope. It completed the happiness I 
had enjoyed for the past three weeks, although I 
miss you everywhere. I need not say to Line 
(Undine) that when I visited the Madonnas I 
remembered that it was her birthday. I know 
that you have good courage, my dear child. I 
have seen it repeatedly. (It is to Undine in par- 
ticular that she now addresses herself.) Women, 
who do not need the permanent valor of men, 
can always have strength from above. I am 
happy in your happiness. You and Ines have 
both that kind of virtue which cures all faults and 
counterbalances the strength of the other sex. It 
is certainly true that housekeeping cares bring 
with them a thousand endearing compensations. 
They are a womanis peculiar joy, and women are 



arm of each of the sons. The hronze in the Tuileries, cast by 
Primatrice for Francis I., represents the group as it was found, 
without restorations." Such was the judgment of thoughtful 
and enlightened criticism. The letter is by .M. Felix Ravaisson. 
Mine. Valmore was in the first rapture of enthusiasm. 



MME. DESBORDES-VALMORE. 127 

apt to be light-hearted. In times of adversity 
you will find them an immense support, and I 
embrace you with all my heart for the manner in 
which you have just proved them so." 

Mme. Valmore's letters to Mme. Pauline 
Duchambge have a character peculiar to 
themselves. Her earliest female friend had 
been the angelic " Albertine " (Gautier), 
whom she has celebrated in her verse, and 
who was snatched away in the flower of her 
youth. An equally tender and life-long 
attachment bound her to Mme. Duchambge, 
author of sweet melodies which our mothers 
knew by heart, and used to sing in the 
times of the Empress Josephine and the 
early years of the Restoration. " Words 
by Mme. Desbordes-Valmore. Music by 
Mme. Pauline Duchambge,'' might be read 
in those days upon any piano. But it was 
not alone this pleasant association in work, 
but also a profound union or rather unison 



I 



128 



MEMOIRS OF 



of spirit which enabled Mine. Valmore to 
say with truth to Mme. Duchambge : " Are 
we not like the two volumes of one book ? " 
The two volumes may have been uniform, 
but most people considered them very 
unlike. Mme. Duchanrbge, accustomed in 
her youth to luxury and all the elegancies 
and refinements of life, experienced a reac- 
tion all the more bitter; and her declining 
years were hard and painful. She had 
become poor and knew not how to grow 
old. She died in 1858, only a year before 
her friend. There are many passages, and 
those not the least entertaining in Mme. 
Valm ore's letters to this lady, which cannot 
yet be given to the world on account of the 
proper names which they contain and their 
entire unreserve about individuals. But 
charming extracts might also be made from 
the more thoughtful portions of the corre- 
spondence, and of these I shall give a few 



MME. DESBORDES-VALMORE. 



129 



only, rather promiscuously, and without 
regard to the order of the dates. For 
example, Mme. Duchambge was always 
recurring to the dreams of her youth, and 
could not help thinking of herself as she 
had formerly been, and Mme. Valmore 
says : — 

"January 5, 1857, evening. 
" Why is it strange that you should think of 
yourself as young in the past? Are we not 
always young? Why should you be troubled by 
this almost incontestable proof of our immortality ? 
Life may become wearisome, but it does not end. 
We shall not die, be sure. Not a night passes 
but I find my little ones in my arms, upon my 
knees. It is their very selves. Oh, if you could 
only feel as confident as I do that they are thor- 
oughly alive, while we are hampered by pain and 
sorrow and fear ! I maintain, then, that the love 
of which you so often dream in your saddest and 
most perplexing hours is a part of yourself : at 
such times you see only its reflection. In a burn- 
ing mirror perhaps, but do not complain. It is 
9 



MEMOIRS OF 



the sense of what was then inexplicable. It is 
your own undying soul following its bent to 
undying love." 

" December 27, 1835. 

" I love you for having shared all my sufferings, 
and for your unfailing tenderness. 

"The Indian lies down in the bottom of his 
canoe when a storm bursts upon the deep, lint I, 
— I cannot lie still ; I must try to find a ray of 
light somewhere, that none but I may know how 
deep the waters are." 

She recalls to her friend the opening 
words of an old romance : — 

"xIpril 19, 1S5G. 

"You know the rest which I have forgotten; 
but the idea was : we shall always weep, we shall 
always pardon, we shall always tremble. We are 
like poplars — " 

" Wednesday, Nov. 27, 1850. 

"I sit by his side (her husband's) and sew. I 
do what I can for the maintenance of our wretched 
lot, which nobody pities, God and yourself ex- 
cepted. Oh, I know that, and it is enough to 



MME. DESBORDES-VALMORE. 131 

make me sew with all my might. But writing is 
impossible. My thoughts are too serious ; my 
heart too heavy. I cannot write the story they 
wanted. I always write from the heart, and now 
mine bleeds too much for pretty, childish fancies." 

There were other reasons why she could 
not write. It is not every one who can 
write for papers and reviews. One must 
adopt the tone and temper of one's patron. 
The best periodicals have their exigencies. 
Thus the " Musee des Families " had seemed 
to afford an opening to Mme. Valmore, but 
on condition that she submitted to the cen- 
sorship, — the Procrustes' bed of the man- 
ager. 

" February 22, 1851. 
" . . . M. Pitre-Chevalier is turning his wheel 
furiously just now, for it provides bread and every 
thing else for his family. And then it is he who 
judges of his own contributions, before they appear, 
and wishes to read, weigh, control, extend, or 
shorten all the rest. He also wishes«*to inspire 

& 



MEMOIRS OF 



them, — a frightful thing for us poor birds who 
have been used to sing without an accompaniment. 
This perpetual supervision would destroy all my 
pleasure in poetizing. So I put off the copying 
of my little independent drama, and my days are 
consumed by other cares, cpuite as heavy." 

" Jaxuaky 15, 1S56, evening. 
" You say, my dear and true friend, that poetry 
is my consolation. On the contrary, it torments 
me, as with a bitter irony. I am like the Indian 
who sings at the stake." 

"Monday, May 11, 1857. 

"It is all dark. There are times when one 
cannot lift a blade of grass without finding a ser- 
pent under it. 

"Let us be ourselves, whatever happens. I 
say so in the name of Christ, who must find that 
worthy of himself which is so very hard. Do you 
remember M. de Lamartine's finest verse, — 

" Rien ne reste de nous, sinon d'avoir aime." x 

She also liked to repeat these two lines, 

1 " Xotliing is left us but the having loved." 



-* 



MME. DESBORDES-VALMORE. 133 

which, if not her own, are at least perfectly 
emblematic of her : — 

" En gemissant d'etre coloinbe, 
Je reads graces aux dieux de n'etre pas vautour." 1 

The name of Mme. Dorval is frequently 
mentioned between these two. This great 
actress, who, in the second stage of her 
career, and comparatively late in life, had 
discovered her full powers, and attained the 
unmistakable accent of passion, bore, other- 
wise, but a slight resemblance to this affec- 
tionate pair, who, with all their overflowing 
sensibility, were full of delicacy, scruple, 
and fear* all discretion and modesty. One 
day, w r hen Mme. Duchambge had called 
Mme. Valmore's attention to a recent book, 
in which certain things were said harshly 
which had better have been left unsaid, 
Mme. Valmore replied, — 

1 " While I mourn as a dove, I thank the gods that I am not 
a vulture." 



*34 



MEMOIRS OF 



"April 22, 1S57. 
"You were afraid Mme. Dorval's story would 
offend me. Did I not know her well enough to 
pity and love her, even though there was some- 
thing in her totally repugnant to my nature? And 
do such things prevent our loving a person ? Alas, 
not always ! Sometimes they have a fatal fascina- 
tion. However, if I had the book of which you 
speak, I would not read it. I always thought 
you had a fatal propensity to cast yourself upon 
the speai*s. Good Heavens ! They are only too 
sure to find our hearts behind bolts and bars." 

Mme. Valmore used her own influence 
over Balzac, and also the influence then 
possessed by another person, whom she calls 
Thisbe, to induce the great novelist, now 
become a theatrical manager, to bring out, 
at the Odeon, a piece of his own, with Mine. 
Dorval in one of the parts. It is, doubtless. 
to the ' ; Eessources de Quinola " that the 
following letter refers. We recognize the 
immense confidence of the great optimist, 



-* 



MME. DESBORDES-VALMORE. 135 

and hear the echo of his tempestuous laugh- 
ter. All hope of success, and desire to 
render a service, vanished in smoke. 

" To Mme. Duchambge. 

" December 7, 1841. 

" You know, my other self, that even ants are 
of some use. And so it was I who suggested, 
not M. de Balzac's piece, but the notion of writ- 
ing it, and the distribution of the parts, and then 
the idea of Mme. Dorval, whom I love for her 
talent, but especially for her misfortunes, and be- 
cause she is so dear to you. I have made such a 
moan, that I have obtained the sympathy and 
assistance of — whom do you guess ? — poor 
Thisbe, who spends her life in the service of 
the litterateur . She talked and insinuated and 
insisted, until at last he came to me and said, 
' So it shall be ! My mind is made up ! Mme. 
Dorval shall have a superb part ! ' And how he 
laughed ! She will be fine in it, and you, — I am 
sure you will be pleased. It is worth having 
caught a horrible fever in the country to hear such 
news as this, and receive an instrument binding 



«6 



MEMOIRS OF 



the Odeon to produce the work. Keep this a pro- 
found .secret. Never betray either me or poor 
Thisbe, particularly our influence on behalf of 
Mme. Dorval. It would give me infinite pleasure 
to see her triumphant. I wish Mme. Dorval all 
possible success, but I do not want her gratitude. 
That is due to your friendship." 



Borne onward by her destiny, and the 
necessities of the hour ; by the stormy force 
of her genius, or her passions, — and they 
were inseparable, — did Mme. Dorval. amid 
the shipwreck of her own life, find time to 
testify to her two discreet and reticent 
friends the delicate regard and gratitude 
which they deserved? Toward the end, 
doubtless, she did exercise some self-re- 
straint, and refused to see them, feeling that 
she lived a very different life from theirs. 

I knew Mme. Duchambge only in ad- 
vanced years, but she must have been very 
pleasing once ; and even then, the thousand 



MME. DESBORDES-VALMORE. 137 

tiny wrinkles in her still pretty and delicate 
face, reminded one of that venerable beauty 
in the " Anthology," the folds of whose 
wrinkles were nests for loves. The hero 
of her youth had been the charming wizard 
Auber, whose restless, but ever brightening 
star, she always adored. She also conceived, 
late in life, a lively, and, it may be, suffi- 
ciently tender admiration for our friend, the 
Breton poet, Brizeux, always a shy and 
wandering spirit. These two names are 
frequently mentioned in this correspondence, 
with varying degrees of enthusiasm. The 
illustrious master, Auber, having been in- 
formed by Mme. Duchambge of one of 
Mme. Valmore's last bereavements, had 
sent her an assurance of his sympathy. 

" To Mme. Duchambge. 

" November 29, 1854. 
"... Your letter moved me all the more, in 
that you brought me, almost by force, a consoler 



138 MEMOIRS OF 



whose name has great power over inc. Tell M. 
Auber that his famous, and always beloved name, 
moved me to tears, like the slumber-song in the 
' Muette.' I shall certainly keep that card, for I 
feel touched and honored by it. It is permeated 
by the goodness of your own heart, and I have 
pressed it to my sorrowful one. I shall not see 
M. Auber himself at present. One must not weep 
in the presence of those harmonious spirits who 
sing for the consolation of the world. I cannot 
bear to think of interrupting one of God's great 
missionaries." 

As for Brizeux, his person, his profile, 
are perpetually appearing and disappearing 
in these letters. Mine. Duchambge was 
fond of reading. She liked to keep up 
with the times in literary matters, and even 
to inform herself about the past. Mme. 
Yalmore was very far from being able to 
satisfy her curiosity, and her demand for 
books. 



MME. DESBORDES-VALMORE. 1 39 

(No date.) 
"... I send you also Turcaret. As for Vir- 
gil, we have none. If I can find one, I will borrow 
it for you. I know nothing about any Virgil save 
our own, — the Breton one, who is now travel- 
ling in the South under the name of Brizeux, and 
whose silence is beginning to make me anxious 
about his health ; unless indeed, you have received 
a letter." 

This lesser Virgil — Brizeux, who had 
not had the good fortune seasonably to 
encounter either Augustus or Maecenas, 
greater or less — made only flying visits to 
Paris. He used quickly to make his escape 
from the capital and spend months, and 
even seasons, now in Brittany and now in 
Florence. He detested writing, and car- 
ried his horror of prose so far that he used 
only a pencil, and traced his characters as 
faintly as possible. His was a strange 
nature, with a poetic sensibility and a poetic 
volition far transcending his power of exe- 



140 MEMOIRS OF 



cution and his actual talent. His long 
intervals of absence, silence, and, as it were, 
eclipse, were the occasion of much anxiety 
to his two friends, and Mme. Valmore con- 
cerned herself the more about them on 
account of her sympathy with the affection- 
ate Pauline. One day a mysterious rumor 
arose that Brizeux, who was buried in Italy, 
had entered a cloister and become a monk. 

" February -22, 1851. 
" It is not in the feverish nature of M. Lacaus- 
sade to take such a resolution as our Brizeux is 
said to have taken ; and yet. he is unfortunate 
enough to understand the sauve qui peut of souls 
who dare not plunge into the conflict, and think 
to escape all by voluntary imprisonment. This 
would be the most fatal of all errors tor us, and 
this it is which makes me tremble for the other, 
if he has indeed dared. I say if, Pauline, for no 
one as yet fully believes the rumor, which lacks 
confirmation, and which is very apt to be started 
about those whom Italy detains by her charm 



MME. DESBORDES-VALMORE. 141 

and renders indolent about writing. Unhappy as 
we are here, we go out of ourselves, if only to 
call up the memory of the beloved being. But 
there, the climate is responsible for all. It over- 
powers you ; it silently floods you with memories, 
which you have not strength to resist. Here, alas ! 
crushing poverty acts like the Italian climate. It 
renders one motionless and conventual, wherever 
one abides." 

The years grew ever harder and more 
comfortless for Brizeux, and although a 
pension, granted or augmented under M. 
Fortoul, came to his assistance, it seemed 
impossible to ameliorate the lot or raise the 
morale of the poet. 

"February 3, 1857. 
" I share your anxiety about Brizeux. Why 
does he not write? To think of. him there, far 
from his mother, sick perhaps and certainly penni- 
less, adds one more to our ever accumulating and 
almost intolerable anxieties . Irritable and intract- 
able as he is, why could he not have been content 
quietly to gather his flowers and reap his har- 



*- 



142 



.UFJ/0/A'S OF 



vests? Ah, Pauline, to be a poet or an artist 
only amid the devouring needs, — the bears and 
the wolves let loose in our streets ! I am as sad 
as you, and I think I need say no more." 

In the three or four last years of his life 
Brizeux altered very much. After each 
interval of absence he would come hack 
changed, — hardly recognizable, more flighty, 
brusque, and negligent than ever. Pro- 
longed solitude was not good for him. The 
time was long past when Mine. Valmore 
had written of him to her son : — 



" I am thrilled by Brizeux's tearful rhymes. 
How is it with you ? There is a divine echo of 
the attic in them. It seems as if actual misery 
were requisite for the production of the notes that 
so haunt one's memory. But the rigors of fate 
may be too far prolonged, and in that ease they 
are no less fatal to the mind than too much lux- 
ury. In the end it becomes corroded and disinte- 



MME. DESBORDES-VALMORE. 



H3 



The same thought is strongly implied in 
the following passage, which depicts the last 
result in all its bitterness : — 



"To Mme. Duchambge. 

" December 27, 1855. 
" I have seen once more your iron Breton, who 
came and made a long and very cordial call. He 
no longer smelled of lavender. But what of that, 
when his verses have still the perfume of heaven ? 
What a poet he is ! And what a hard step- 
mother is life which can transform so fine a crea- 
ture into what he now is, and must become. 
Gustave Planche is infinitely worse. Think of 
these two divinely-gifted men shivering in the 
miserable chambers of ruinous inns., consumed by 
internal fires. I can assure you they live like 
sleep-walkers. Look at their eyes." 1 

1 Brizeux died at Montpellier, May 3, 1858. He had arrived 
at that place a fortnight before in the very last stages of pul- 
monary consumption, but confident that the warm sunshine of 
the South would restore him. The only person he knew at 
Montpellier was M. Saint-Rene' Taillandier, who surrounded 
him with the tenderest care, and received him as a poet and a 
brother. In his last moments, at least, he had all the comfort 
and consolation possible. 



144 MEMOIRS OF 



Alfred de Musset is absent from the list 
of Mine. Valmore's acquaintances, but his is 
the only famous contemporary name which 
we miss on her poet's crown. Lamartine, 
Beranger, Hugo, and Vigny, all, as we shall 
see, sought out and saluted her at one time 
or another. She was really intimate with 
Alexander Dumas, who added in 1838 a 
captivating preface to her collection enti- 
tled, " Pleurs et Pauvres Fleurs," and of 
whom she said in 1833 to her little son, 
Hippolyte, after the author had been to see 
him: " M. Dumas liked you very much. 
He is kind and obliging ; but, like all men 
of great literary talent, he is not to be culti- 
vated. He belongs to the world. — to all 
worlds." 

"With Musset alone, there was no oppor- 
tunity for acquaintanceship and sympathy, 
not even the airiest tendril of association ; 
and she, regarding him from a distance. 



*- 



MME. DESBORDES-VALMORE. 145 

considered him far more successful and self- 
absorbed than he really was. To her he 
appeared the reckless slave of passion, com- 
pletely carried away by the rushing torrent 
of life ; and she cherished a prejudice 
against him which an auspicious personal 
acquaintance would have dispelled. More- 
over, with Alfred de Musset begins that 
clear and deep line of demarcation which 
divides the new generation from the old. 
The sources and the current of inspiration 
were changed. The two generations no 
longer understood one another at the first 
word. 

"To Mme. Duchambge. 

"January 20, 1857. 

" Could you suggest a simple and straightfor- 
ward way of reaching INI. Alfred de Musset, who 
is, unhappily, as I hear, very ill. There is a 
young English musician, in whom M. Jars is 
much interested, who wants to present him with 
an air which he has composed, for words of De 
10 



1 46 MEMOIRS OF 



Musset's. I do not know a single person who is 
on intimate terms with this charming but haughty 
genius, — and it would have to be a man, — C, 
for example, if he had only remained simply polite 
to me. If a woman were to undertake it, he and 
M. de Lamartine, and some others, would be sure 
to cry, 'Another victim!' Oh, I have heard 
them ! My savage instincts have always served 
me remarkably well. The poor exile (Hugo) 
never said such a word. He, at least, was never 
considered a coxcomb ; and really he is too great 
a man for that. There is an atom of idiocy in 
supposing that a whole sex is to be sacrificed for 
your glory. It has always kept me as mute as a 
fish." 

Between Beranger and herself there was 
a quiet and sincere attachment, although 
they were never intimate. She visited him 
in his last days, after he had lost his life- 
long companion, Judith. 

"To Mme. Duciiambge. 

" April, 1S57. 

" The afflicted ought to understand one another, 



MME. DESBORDES-VALMORE. 1 47 

and better on Sundays than on other days, — 
mon Dieu ! 

" I did so want to see you yesterday, after pay- 
ing a very sad visit to Beranger. I felt compelled 
to go, despite my own strange condition. One 
must make an effort to live. I found M. Beran- 
ger so ill, and so profoundly conscious of it him- 
self, that my call was a very painful one. He 
told me distinctly, and with grave resignation, 
that he could not survive the loss of his poor 
friend. One sees that very plainly in every line 
of his wasted figure. You would hardly know 
him. I came away less hopeful than I went. 
His malady infected me." 

Kind and loving, and subject to illusions, 
though she was, Mme. Valmore was no 
dupe. She was a better judge of persons 
and of character than her soft-hearted friend, 
and often showed her knowledge of human 
nature, by saying to the latter, with reference 
to persons altogether polished and affable 
externally, " Ah, how many stabs are con- 



I4-S MEMOIRS OF 



cealed by the smiles and sweet ' good-morn- 
ings ' of the world ! " Mme. Duchambge 
was at one time inclined to ask a substantial 
favor of one of their most agreeable and 
fashionable visitors, and Mme. Yalmore 
wrote, — 

" Febrcary 10, 1813. 
" You are cherishing a delusive dream about 
M. X. He is the last man in the world to whom 
I would tell all. His icy polish repels the bare 
idea of a pecuniary obligation. He wrote for M. 
B., content to have his feelings stirred without 
result. But, Pauline, there is nothing in such 
hearts for us. In these days the rich will come 
and tell you their troubles with such utter candor, 
such bitter bewailings, that you are compelled to 
pity them more than you do yourself. He once 
expatiated to me on his terrible trials in connection 
with a house he was building. It was to have 
cost, I think, a hundred thousand francs, and the 
plans were mounting up to twice that, which, 
together with the cost of his son's education, was 
enough to drive him wild ; and he did actually 



MME. DESBORDES-VALMORE. 149 

appear ill. What can you say to such a child of 
fortune? That you have two chemises, and no 
tablecloths? He would reply, ' Ah, how fortunate 
you are ! Then you will not think of building ! ' 
Think no more about it. An attack of hope is the 
same for us as an attack of fever." 

And again, after the visit of two great 
ladies, — 

" Yesterday came those two princesses, intend- 
ing to take me out to dine by main force ! You 
know the horror I have of a city dinner-party. 
They found me in bed, and that was my answer. 
Oh, the irony of our two lots ! I nad one franc 
in my drawer for the first instalment of the fierce 
Victoire's monthly wages. And those excellent 
ladies said : ' Mme. Valmore has every thing so 
pretty about her ! ' The son's wife of one of them 
has an income of five thousand pounds." 1 

But I must hasten. After the death of 

1 1 happen to know that one of these noble ladies had that 
genuine goodness which is not confined to words. In this case 
the hearts were generous as the words were kind. The irony 
was only between the two fates. 



ICO MEMOIRS OF 



her sister Eugenie at Rouen, in 1850. and 
of her brother Felix at Douai, in 1851, 
Mine. Valmore had but one sister left, Ce- 
cile, the eldest, also living at Rouen. It 
was this elder sister who had taught little 
Marceline to read in infancy, and in more 
than one passage of the poems we find a 
memorial sketch of her gentle face. In 
sensibility and tenderness, and also in a 
certain primitive simplicity of imagination, 
she was a true sister of the poet. It was 
she who once wrote to Mme. Valmore the 
following affecting letter, which reads like a 
little legend of by-gone days : — 

" On Sunday I went to say prayers for a lady 
who sometimes helps me when I know not to whom 
to apply. She holds ont her hand and revives my 
fainting courage. I went to Bon Secours and 
prayed our dear Lady for her. I also prayed for 
all of us. I cast myself on her pity. I asked her 
to reward you for all the good you have done, 



MME. DESBORDES-VALMORE. 151 

which is the more meritorious because your position 
is so difficult. Well, dear sister, on my way home 
I found myself surrounded and almost buried in 
Virgin's threads. I cannot describe the effect it 
had upon me. In an instant the memory rushed 
upon me of the Rue Notre Dame, and the ceme- 
tery which was our playground. I seemed to see 
all our childhood as if it had been yesterday. I 
returned to my little chamber, and wept for my 
complete isolation, and for all that our unfortunate 
family has suffered. Why did I not die in that 
chapel, when I was praying to the Mother of Sor- 
rows for us all? Yet let us hope." 

Whereupon Mme. Valmore, throwing her- 
self into her mood, endeavored to arouse her 
courage, to stimulate her failing faculties, 
to soften her by the tale of common sorrows, 
and cheer her by simple pictures of the 
pleasant days and sports of childhood. 

" November 9, 1854. 
"... The lady who sometimes lends me 
money for the month's expenses, on condition of 



MEMOIRS OF 



being paid at the end of the month, ha- been 
unable to come to my assistance on account of the 
rain and sundry perplexities of her own. But you 
have long known that the unfortunate must depend 
on one another for assistance. It is undoubtedly 
true. The rich are no worse than we, but they 
are utterly unable to understand how one can 
want for the humblest necessities of life. So we 
will not speak of the rich, except to rejoice that 
they do not suffer as we do. 

" Night before last I was so happy as to dream 
of you, and of embracing you with such intense 
and rapturous affection that I awoke. We were 
hastening toward one another with open arms. 
We were dressed alike, as sisters should be. both 
wearing palm-leaf shawls of fine wool. Alas ! we 
had to content ourselves with a look and a pressure 
of the hand. This pleasant dream reminds me of 
what I have felt again and again in life, — that 
there is no love like a sister's. 

" I hear no more about your sons than you do, 
and I sympathize deeply in your maternal anxiety. 
This is an iron age. Grief, luxury, poverty, 
make men wild. For hearts warm as ours, it is 
cold. 



MME. BE SB ORDES- 1 'A LMORE. 



153 



"Would you like some pocket-handkerchiefs or 
stockings ? Do not laugh at the offers I make in 
my poverty. Do you want some ribbons ? Oh, 
my dear sister, if I could only ask you these ques- 
tions face to face, and have a whole day's talk with 
you ! My heart is still sore and sorrowful, but it 
is not arid. My tears keep all alive." 

This last sister also died. The measure 
of mourning was full, and there were mo- 
ments when, in the plenitude of its distress, 
the humble heart which had never mur- 
mured until now, could not refrain from 
questioning Providence, as Job once did, and 
asking why so much suffering should be 
concentrated in a single destiny. 

" To her Niece. 

"January 30, 1855. 

" I knew long since the extent of my impo- 
tence, but you can understand that it comes home 
to me with a terrible shock when I realize how 
many are gone whom I loved, and with whom I 
suffered. Yes, Camille, it is heart-rending. I 



*- 



154 MEMOIRS OF 



have neither brother nor sisters. I am bereaved 

of all those precious beings, without the consola- 
tion of feeling that I survive to execute their will, 
which was always, always to do good. What can 
we say of these judgments of God? If we have 
deserved them it is all the sadder. I am thinking 
only of myself, my dear. But I often wonder what 
it was in me which demanded such severity of our 
dear Creator. He is just, and it cannot be that he 
would chastise so heavily without cause ; but the 
thought is often perfectly overwhelming." 

Sooner or later every believing heart must 
have its hour of temptation and doubt, its 
agony and bloody sweat, its garden of Geth- 
semane. The fatal and inexorable aspect 
of the bare reality recurs irresistibly to 
those tender souls that fain would hope, 
overpowering and overwhelming them with 
woe. It was in one of her hours of dejec- 
tion that Mme. Valmore wrote as fol- 
lows : — 



A/ME. DESBORDES-VALMORE. 



155 



" To Mme. Derains. 

"May 11, 1856.. 

" Are you at work? Do you find anywhere a 
support for your weak heart? — a heart like mine, 
but calmer, more assured. Nevertheless, I see at 
an immense distance the Christ who shall come 
again. His breath is moving over the crowd. 
He opens his arms wide, but there are no more 
nails, no more for ever ! But the moment I turn 
my eyes earthward again my agony returns. I 
feel as if I must fall. I crawl to door or window 
for support. I do not utter a sound, but it is ter- 
rible ; my dear friend, it is terrible; and I cannot 
always feel that the angels are sustaining me. 
Ah, you deserve to have yours always at your 
side ! 

" These are wild words, but they prove at least 
how much I love you ; that my life is love. 

" And still it rains, and the clouds are so 
dark ! " 

We have come to the supreme avowal, 
the saddest of all, — that of despair. 

When we write the lives of certain poets, 
we seem to be showing the reverse of their 



1^6 MEMOIRS OF 



poetry. There is a discrepancy in tone. 
Here, in this long domestic Odyssey, we see 
only the groundwork, and, as it were, the 
stuff out of which Mme. Valmorc's poetry 
was made. Her life was that of a bird for 
ever on the bough ; and the bough was dry 
and leafless, and her nest the home of 
mourning. She was like Virgil's Philomela, 
but no songstress was more sincere. In 
making extracts from her pathetic corre- 
spondence, I have often been reminded of 
another poetess, exquisite volumes of whose 
writing have been given to the public, — I 
mean Mile. Eugenie de Guerin. But what 
a difference, I have said, between the griefs 
of these two ! The noble maiden of Cayla, 
under the sweet skies of the South, in the 
midst of beloved scenes, with modest means, 
or rather a rural poverty, which is, never- 
theless, abundance, and all the elegancies 
and refinements proper to a maiden's home ; 



MME. DESBORDES-VALMORE. 157 

and the other amid the dust and defilement 
of the city, on the highway, always in quest 
of lodgings, climbing to the fifth story, 
wounded on every angle, her heart lacerated 
and crying as she thought of the contrast, 
" Oh, the peaceful sorrows of the country ! " 
Yet those who knew Mme. Valmore during 
those long years of trial, who visited her in 
the humble and narrow lodgings where she 
found it so difficult to collect the ruin of her 
goods, who saw her there, - — easy, polished, 
gracious, and even hospitable, investing 
every thing with a certain attractive and 
artistic air, hiding her griefs under a natural 
grace, lighted even by gleams of merri- 
ment, brave and gallant creature that she 
was, although sensitive and delicate to 
the last degree ! — those who saw her so, 
and now read what I have written, must 
love and reverence her more even than 
before. 



— * 



IC8 MEMOIRS OF 



And, indeed, when we examine the details 
of a life like this, and realize how perpetu- 
ally and infinitely difficult was mere subsist- 
ence to that refined and honorable family. 
that rare group of charming and superior 
minds, worthy, apparently, of all tenderness 
and protection, cherished and esteemed by 
all, — when we think of these things, we 
are tempted to accuse our boasted civiliza- 
tion, and blush for society itself. Still more, 
when we think of Mme. Valmore's natural 
retinue, — of that immense number of women 
similarly situated, who knew not where to 
find a resting-place ; courageous, intelligent, 
in need of bread, those " dear unfortunates " 
who instinctively, and as if in obedience to 
a mysterious behest, flocked around her, 
whom she knew not how to succor, but with 
whom she was ever ready to share the little 
which sufficed not even for herself! Evi- 
dently there is a remedy to seek. There is 



* 



MME. DESBORDES-VALMORE. 



159 



something to be done, if only in the educa- 
tion of women. 

I had thought, by way of offset to all this, 
to enumerate the names of some to whom 
she was much indebted ; of certain kindly 
and helpful souls whom she encountered on 
her way, and who afforded her consolation, 
alleviation, and support, in the midst of her 
trials. Such was M. Jars, whom she knew 
ever after the days of the comic opera, and 
the " Pot de Fleurs," but in whom she never 
confided fully until late in life, and of whom 
she said, when he died, in April, 1857 : " I 
miss the innocent and kindly affection of M. 
Jars very much. All through my stormy 
life it has been like a silent chapel, where 
my thoughts could find repose ; and I had 
the happiness, too, of knowing that he was 
happy, and exempt from conflict with those 
necessities which are so wounding to the 
honor." Such, also, was M. Dubois, the 



l6o MEMOIRS OF 



steward of the general hospital at Douai, 
who had surrounded, with care and kind- 
ness, the stormy and morose old age of Felix 
Desbordes ; who had taken Mrae. Valmore's 
own place at the death-bed of her beloved 
and unfortunate brother, and who had 
undertaken the last offices with all a sister's 
pious solicitude ; and M. Davenne, the su- 
perintendent of public charities, an officer 
among a thousand, not always intrenching 
himself in regulations in order to avoid 
doing good, and who deserved that she 
should write of him in a transport of grati- 
tude. 

" To Mme. Derains. 

" September 29, 1856. 
" I promised you, my dear friend, and I prom- 
ised myself, that I would announce the first ray of 
alleviation in our lot. So, if you had not written, 
you would have known, almost as soon as I, that 
my poor brother-in-law has positively been admit- 



MME. DESBORDES-VALMORE. i6l 

ted into the best asylum in Paris. Providence is 
relenting toward him and us, and the best of living 
men has just granted me this great favor, to which 
I had not the slightest claim, and notwithstanding 
four good reasons to the contrary. 

" This almost divine superintendent even said 
to me : ' The thing is impossible, madame, and yet 
I see that it must be. And since it concerns your 
peace of mind, we will dispense with unnecessary 
forms and make him a beneficiary for the sake of 
conferring a benefit on you.' " 1 

But I cannot name all whom I would, 
and I only indicate here what may be more 
appropriately developed in the book which 
I hope will yet be written. 

1 I can come no nearer an equivalent to the play upon words 
in the original of M. Davenne's graceful note : " Pour que vous 
soyez heureuse, nous en ferons un homme heureux." Un heureux, 
in French, is sometimes a man on whom a woman has bestowed 
the sunshine of her especial favor, as in the proverb, " II ne se 
peut pas qu'une femnie qui fait des heureux soit longtemps lieu- 
reuse." (Tr.) 



1 62 MEMOIRS OF 



V. 

Some note must, however, be taken of the 
various tributes of literary - homage which 
Mine. Valmore received, and we will begin 
with the most royal and magnificent of all, 
— that of Lamartine. He only took the 
initiative, assisted in the beginning by a 
mistake. There lived, in the first years of 
the Restoration, a vagrant and exceedingly 
bohemien poet, by birth a Franche-Comtian. 
or something of the sort, but always a pro- 
vincial, whose forte was the elegy and the 
laudatory epistle, — facile of inspiration, and 
a little trite in his flowing harmony, — by 
name, Aime De Loy. He had extended his 
travels as far as Brazil, whence he returned 
poor, to die in 1831. It was to this poet, 
whose misfortunes were greater than his 
talent, that Mine. Valmore addressed a few 
verses, which were inserted in a keepsake, 



MME. DESBORDES-VALMORE. 163 



and inscribed simply, " To M. A. D. L." 
But whom could A. D. L. be supposed to 
mean at that date, if not the reigning poet, 
Alphonse de Lamartine? The keepsake 
having fallen under his notice, Lamartine 
did really assume that the verses were meant 
for him, and immediately poured forth a 
stream of airy strophes, — an admirable and 
really noble lyric, in praise of his modest 
sister in song. Years before he had re- 
marked and discriminated from others the 
peculiar accents of Mme. Valmore. One 
day, somewhere about 1828, he was talking 
with M. de Latour, and the latter introduced 
into the conversation the names of several 
contemporary poetesses, when Lamartine 
cried out: "Ah ! but there is somebody better 
than all these, — that poor little comedienne 
from Lyons, — what is her name 1 " and he 
himself presently recalled it. He afterwards 
composed that fine poem, in the grand 



164 MEMOIRS OF 



opening verses of which he portrays the 
gallant craft in the pride of her departure, 
laughing at the waves, and sporting even 
with the storms ; and then, by way of con- 
trast, the poor fishing-boat, such as he had 
seen in the bay of Xaples, — the home and 
sole asylum, by day and night, of a whole 
family living on board ; the father and sons 
laboring for their daily bread, the mother 
and girls engaged in the most menial offices. 
We must quote some of these verses, the 
full force and truth of which were never 
apparent until now. And observe that 
Lamartine barely knew Mine. Valmore, and 
only at a distance ; but the divination of 
genius is a kind of second sight, and, at the 
first glance, he had understood her life, and 
has left us an immortal picture of it in a few 
vivid images. 1 In the innocent and happy 

1 The poem referred to will be found entire, though inade- 
quately translated, at the elose of this volume. It is well for 



MME. DESBORDES-VALMORE. 165 

years before politics had supervened, it 
was given M. de Lamartine to pour the 
balm of similar strains into many a wounded 
heart. In that he was a great consoler, 
much is to be forgiven him. Accompanying 
the verses in question, Mme. Valmore re- 
ceived the following letter : — 

"January 25, 1831. 
"Madame, — I have read in the Keepsake 
some verses which I would like to believe ad- 
dressed to the author of the ' Harmonies Poe"- 
tiques.' They have given me a pretext, which I 
will not neglect, for offering a poor assurance of 
my admiration to the woman, who, through her 
noble and affecting poetic genius, has moved me 
more deeply than any other. Accept, madame, 
these very imperfect verses, in which I have en- 
deavored to express what I have always felt, and 
sometimes said, about a situation so unworthy of 

us who remember clearly only the mortifying circumstances of 
M. de Lamartine's decline, to be reminded of the lofty and 
almost supreme position which he once held in French letters, 
and the kindness and magnanimity with which he exercised 
his authority. (Tr.) 



1 66 MEMOIRS OF 



you and of fate. I beseech you to see in them 
only :i testimonial of my deep sympathy and 
respect. " A. de Lamaktine." 

Touched to the heart, and ready as an 
echo, Mme. Yalmore instantly replied in 
the same measure. I will quote only two 
or three stanzas, in which she repudiates 
with confusion the word glory, magnifi- 
cently accorded her by the great poet. 

" But in the minstrelsy sublime 

And sweet, my heart has ne'er forgot, 
(Sweeter to think than read that rhyme !) 
Thou saidest 'glory ' many a time; 
A word whose meaning I know not. 

" Only a woman with no higher 

Or deeper love than love and tears ; 
"Whose heart has been her only lyre, — 
And thou alone dost guess the fire, 
The dying fire her bosom bears, — 

"Only an humble gleaner, T, 

Who fain would her poor sheaf complete 
With scattered oars. Then suddenlj 
Shone thy resplendent charity, 

Aid heaped a Imrevst ;i( my feet." 



MME. DESBORDES-VALMORE. 



I6 7 



At the request of M. Duthilloeul, at Douai, 
she sent the latter a copy of M. de Lamar- 
tine's verses, adding the following lines, 
which were dictated by the same feeling as 
her poetical reply : — 

"Emotion has overcome modesty, monsieur; 
and I have copied these beautiful verses with tears 
in my eyes, forgetting that they were addressed to 
so obscure a person as myself. But no : they 
were composed for the poet's own glory, — to show 
how full his heart is of sublime and gracious pity. 
They are at your service." 

As for Lamartine, he thanked Mme. Val- 
more for her tremulous and touching re- 
sponse, in a letter which I shall also give, 
and which will worthily close this harmo- 
nious interchange, this cartel of lofty and 
tender poesy. 

"Madame, — I am rewarded fivefold, and I 
blush to read in your verses the eulogy which you 
bestow on mine. One of your strophes is worth 
all mine. I have them by heart. 



l6S MEMOIRS OF 



" I hope that fortune, too, will blush for her in- 
justice, and will grant you an easier lot, and 
worthier of you. One who was marked in her 
cradle as the recipient of one of heaven's best 
gifts, should not despair of Providence, especially 
when she can plead her case in language so 
divine. 

"I intend shortly to pass a couple of days at 
Lyons, and I shall esteem myself highly favored 
if I may be permitted to add the pleasure of a per- 
sonal acquaintance to that of admiring and thank- 
ing you thus. .. . T 
° J "Al.de Lamahtixe. 

" Macon, March 3, 1851." 

Next to the friendship of M. de Lamar- 
tine, and not far below it, must be set 
another very close and fond connection, 
having its roots in the humane, popular, 
and thoroughly fraternal sympathies of the 
two friends. I refer to the mutual attach- 
ment of Mme. Valmore and M. Raspail, — 
him whom she used to call " dear Socrates," 
" brave and good prisoner," ' ; charming 



->h 



MME. DESBORDES-VALMORE. 169 

Stoic," and to whom she dedicated the pit- 
eous poem, " Les Prisons et Les Prieres," of 
the last collection. The extracts from letters 
which I shall give will illustrate better than 
any words of mine that noble and magnani- 
mous friendship which grew in absence, and 
was confirmed by trial. 

After his release from the citadel of Doul- 
lens, M. Raspail went to pass his years of 
banishment in Belgium, where he enjoyed 
the sweets of recovered space, nature, and 
sunshine. He lived in the country, and 
amused himself by editing a medical journal, 
where he said whatever he liked, and of 
which he was the sole manager. On the 
9th of September, 1855, he wrote to Mine. 
Valmore, — 

" In your next letter, tell me in what corner of 
this green Flanders you were born. You cannot 
think what a pleasure it has been to hunt out the 
modest cradles of our different celebrities. And I 



-* 



MEMOIRS OF 



have often enjoyed telling the tale of these pilgrim- 
ages, in connection with some trifling artistic cir- 
cumstance which seemed to suggest them. The 
Flemings are quite German in the way they vene- 
rate the relics of their saints in the republic of Art. 
In France they preserve the slippers of kings. 
Here a slipper of Rubens or Vesalius is of more 
account than the crown-diamonds. 'Tis true they 
only venerate their illustrious dead, and are indif- 
ferent to the undistinguished, even those whom 
they have loved. Their village cemeteries are 
indescribably odious in my eyes. My own hamlet 
is going to institute a reform in this regard, because 
it fears to offend me. I want the virtues of each 
of our good peasants perpetuated upon a tomb- 
stone. I want them to find rest from their labors 
in a delightful spiritual intercourse. The Fleming 
is slow, but he advances, and when once he has 
taken his walking-stick, he will go far before he 
stops. 

"But I am talking of what you know better 
than I, — you who were a Flemish girl such as I 
see in the pictures of Van Eyck and Vandyke, 
long before you became one of the glories of our 
French Helicon. It is the way with us all. Be- 



MME. DESBORDES-VALMORE. 171 

ginners think they can teach masters ; tourists 
know more than natives. Forgive me for sharing 
the common mania. It is so pleasant." 

M. Raspail had published in his Review 
some eloquent articles on the personal and 
moral peculiarities of Rousseau. Mme. Val- 
more thanked him for them. 

" October, 1855. 

' e We were reading your noble pages on Jean 
Jacques when your letter arrived. That letter, 
which I read in comj)any with my son with inex- 
pressible interest, I have put away with the most 
ardent and loyal things you have written. Never 
was Rousseau judged more righteously, and at the 
same time more affectionately. Ai'e you his 
brother, my dear exile? or are you himself, cured 
of all his ills of body and mind ? That is a de- 
lightful idea. 

"I have one request to make, and you must 
grant it in your dear and truthful daughters 
name. Never call me a muse. That I am not ; 
and, dear friend, I am so sad and so sincere that I 



MEMOIRS OF 



I 



do not deserve the shadow of mockery, however 
innocent on your part. You can see that I hardly 
know how to spell what my mother's heart dic- 
tates." 

It is affecting to find in this correspond- 
ence, and under an exile's pen, a complete 
lyrical and patriotic hymn to France, as 
conceived and saluted by her son and citi- 
zen. Sweet France we used to say, even 
in the Middle Age. It was thus that the 
chevaliers and the brave Rolands hailed 
their country, dying afar from her. The 
children of the Revolution renewed and 
rekindled, with fervor and pride, this filial 
and impassioned worship. Has it been 
weakened since, as too many symptoms indi- 
cate 1 Is it altered, exhausted 1 The France 
of our fathers of '89 and '92 ; the France of 
our youth, — of Manuel, Bcranger, Raspail, 
— is it not, will it not be the France of to- 
day and to-morrow ? I dare not press the 



MME. DESBORDES-VALMORE. 173 

future, nor force the omens. I will not 
search and see whether there be more or 
less of resemblance. I will only quote this 
pious and enthusiastic invocation to the 
absent fatherland, uttered on the New Year 
by a faithful, loyal son : — 

" Boitsfokt, January 1, 1856. 
"... What a beautiful country is mine ! A 
land fertile in miracles, even in her moments of 
agony and partial aberration. Here, one exists ; 
there, one is : he lives, he loves, he is appreciated, 
understood, respected, until death. If France 
were expunged from the map, the head and heart 
of the universe were gone. This little nook thinks 
and acts for the world. All is regenerated the 
moment she comprehends that her garb must be 
changed. When this Jupiter frowns, the world 
trembles. The mere memory of her sunshine 
would warm one amid the icebergs of the pole. 
As mother, or step-mother, we adore her. We 
would die twenty deaths for her, and she might 
even be ungrateful, provided she were still fair. 
We have seen, in the past, idiots and wretches in 



174 MEMOIRS OF 



possession of France, but they have never humili- 
ated, never enslaved her. Sing, my muse, this 
glorious France, heroic, brilliant, kind and loving, 
prudent and liberal, coquettish and essentially 
amorous, a trifle satirical, but always just and 
impartial ; grand mistress of that indefinite prog- 
ress which involves in its rush even Cossacks and 
Hurons. Sing this mother, you, her adopted 
child, 1 who understand her so well! And allow 
me to call you my muse, since my prosaic lot gives 
me no right to call you my sister, and be sure that 
I love no less than I admire you." 

No wonder that when Mine. Valmore 
passed away, M. liaspail, who had continued 
to reside in Belgium, should have written, 
five days after receiving the news of her 
death, to the son of the dear deceased, the 
grave and. pathetic letter which follows, and 
which deserves to remain associated with her 



1 M. Enspail thought that Mine. Valmore was a Fleming, 
born in Belgium, beyond the frontier. He seems not to have 
known that Bhe was from Donai. 



MME. DESBORDES-VALMORE. 175 

memory as a supreme tribute, a funeral 
oration : — 

" Moxsieur, — I have read and re-read, with 
eyes blinded by tears, your pious letter. It is as 
if your illustrious mother had herself charged you 
with bidding me a last farewell, — you to whom 
now descend, undivided, her affections, her grand 
qualities, and the memories of her life. Monsieur, 
your mother was an angel. The realm of letters 
and poesy rarely produces a soul like hers. In 
this world of intrigue and dissimulation, of lying- 
loves and mercenary hatreds, where every thing, 
even genius, has its price, she kept her talent pure 
from stain, her fame always young, her heart free 
from occasions of hatred. Rivals adored and 
readers blessed her. She was more than a muse ; 
she was always the good fairy of poetry, and, 
among all my tender memories, the sweetest is 
that of having taken her sympathy with me behind 
the bars of my prison. I should have loved her 
with a filial love that might have aroused your 
jealousy, if my age had not allowed me to love her 
as a sister. She has written me in prose and 
she has written me in verse, but her letters are all 



I 76 MEMOIRS OF 



alike charming. I think that your mother Was 
always and everywhere the poet. Her silence at 
the last was due to a presentiment which .-he 
would communicate to no one for fear of giving 
pain. 

" She has left you only a name, but fortunes 
might -well be given in exchange for such a patent 
of nobility. 

" You were cradled in poetry, trained by her 
whom I have called the tenth muse, — the muse 
of virtue. Remain, monsieur, the living embodi- 
ment of reverence for her memory. Never had 
literature sorer need, that these noble reminis- 
cences should be often revived. 

" Accept, monsieur, and bear to your honored 
father, the assurance, that I feel no less keenly 
than yourselves, the loss of this dear lady, this 
loving soul, this genius, all the rarer that its home 
was in the heart. 

" F. V. Raspail. 

" Stalle-sous-Uccle, 
July 28, 1S59." 

Mme. Valmore died on the night of the 
22d of July, 1859. Her last residence was 



MME. DESBORDES-VALMORE. 177 

73 Rue de Rivoli, corner of Rue Etierme. 
She was seventy-three years old. 

On the fourth of the following August, 
the town of Douai discharged a sad duty to 
its beloved poet. The Douaisian populace 
flocked to the church of Notre-Dame, 
close to the early home of the deceased. 
to attend the solemn mass there celebrated 
in her memory, with the assistance of the 
city band, and the choral society of Saint 
Cecilia. Posterity had begun for the hum- 
ble singer. 

Contemporary voices have been unani- 
mous in awarding her the honor she de- 
served, and in ascribing to her the same 
traits. Alfred de Vigny said that " hers was 
the finest female mind of our time." For 
my own part I should be content to say, 
" Hers was the most courageous, tender, 
and compassionate of feminine souls." Be- 
ranger wrote to herself, " An exquisite 
12 



MEMOIRS OF 



sensibility marks your productions, and is 
revealed in your every word." Brizeux 
called her •' Sweet spirit with the golden 
voice." Victor Hugo wrote to her, and for 
once his words were none too strong for his 
meaning: "You are womanhood itself; 
you are poetry itself. Yours is a charming 
talent, — the most moving I know in a 
woman." 

A word before I close to those, both men 
and women, who may feel that 1 have laid 
too much stress on the sorrows of Mine. 
Valmore, and are tempted to say, remember- 
ing their own private griefs : " And have I 
then lain on roses % " 

I would reply, — all human sorrows are 
akin. Each has his own. We need not 
compare them critically, nor seek for a com- 
mon measure among them. There is no 
such thing. Every one understands to the 
full the pressure and the sting of what he 



-* 



MME. DESBORDES-VALMORE. 179 

bears. We have no need, alas ! to be jeal- 
ous of one another's woes. But the peculi- 
arity of Mme. Valmore's trials, that which 
differentiates them from others, is that they 
left her mind perfectly free, and never 
checked the outflow of her heart toward the 
sorrowing about her. She was never so 
absorbed in her own griefs as not to lend a 
ready ear to those of others. " How many 
alien miseries are blended with our own ! " 
she once wrote to an intimate friend : 
" you cannot conceive how many unhappy 
people I know, and how the thought op- 
presses me ! I used once to hope that I 
might be enduring enough for several ; 
but, ah, I was wrong ! " "I cannot com- 
fort myself just now," she wrote again, 
" with the prosperity of a single friend. 
The happiness of others would be strength 
to me." 

A Wallachian proverb had impressed her 



I So MME. DESBORDES-VALMORE 



very much : " Give until death:' This Rou- 
manian motto became familiar to her, and 
she, so poor, so bereaved, loved some- 
times to repeat, and always practised it. 



POEMS 



* 



IDYLS. 



THE ROSES. 

Clear was the air. The glory of the night 

Seemed laughing love to scorn ; 
For he loves shadow, but the stars burned bright, 

As ushering in a new mysterious morn. 
And all was mystery. Birds in the trees 

Mistook the midnight for the matin-time, 
And brake out singing; while the gentle breeze 

Bore the notes faintly, — startled by the chime. 
Out in the fields a few young bees were winging 

Around in airy circles, and the Spring, 
With noiseless foot her fragrant treasures bringing, 

Decked all our orchards with white blossoming. 
Oh, mother mine ! — so was my fancy stirred 

Me thought there was a, fete that lovely night; 
Methought my dearest friends afar I heard 

Humming low tunes, my coming to invite ; 
And, listening so, I marked the streamlet flowing, 
That bathes the roses for their royal blowing, 



184 TDYLS. 

Tempering the lierceness of the fervid hours; 

Wherefore I sought the cool of moss and ilowers, 
And fell asleep. Ah. chide not ! mother, pray ! 

For wlio within our little close could come? 

The sheep were folded, all the dogs at home, 
And I, — I had seen Daphnis pa— that day 

Beside his father. So, lulled by the stream, 
Senses and soul with slumber soft were veiled, 
And slowly, slowly the one image paled 

I feared to see on waking from my dream. 
I slept. But ah ! — that image, all undaunted, 

With the stream's murmur stole into my heart. 

The whispering forest in the spell had part 
Whereby slept even maiden-shame enchanted. 

And now, in vain, my playmates in their singing 

Had set the meadows with my name a-ringing, 
Beckoning with arms entwined ; I had been fain 
To say : " Dance on ! I slept and I would sleep again ! " 

Dreams thronged as cloudlets throng the moon at 
night, 

Tinged by her beams with colors vague and tender; 

As wings of butterflies receive their splendor 
From the air that sustains them in their (light. 

Calm, with shut eyes, — I knew I was asleep. 

1 stayed the Meeting \ i.sions at my will 
Until they failed- — ah. mother, 1 could weep! — 
And vanished. Only one dream haunts me still. — 



PARTING AT NIGHT. 1 85 

This, — I saw Daphnis darting through the glade ; 

My eyes were sealed, and yet I saw him well ; 

Upon my beating heart his shadow fell ; 
His shadow only, — yet I was afraid. 

Softly, oh softly ! twice he spoke my name. 
I trembled, could have cried ; 

Then on my lips fell one red rose aflame, 
But terror voice denied. 

■ And ever since, — ah ! chide not, mother wise, — 
Daphnis, who daily passes with his sire, 
Follows me still with glance of sad desire : 

He reads my dream, my mother, in my eyes ! 

II. 
PARTING AT NIGHT. 

Can it be late ? How strange a thing ! 

How like a flash the hours are fled ! 

Midnight is ringing overhead, 
And yet we two are lingering. 

I did not dream of slumber yet ; 

I thought the sun was barely set! 

Sleeps then the bird already in the grove ? 

Ah, but the night is all too line ! 

Like fire the stars in the brooklet shine, 
There's never a cloud above. 

Now is it not for loves' sake, pray, 

So sweet a night hath ta'en the place of day ? 



1 86 IDYLS. 



But go, — seek thine own cot, and needfully, 

And wake our slumbering watch-dog by no noise, 

Lest he mistake thee, lift his voice 
And lull my mother naughty talus of me. 

Thou answerest not. Thou turnest thy face aside. 
In vain ! From me thou hidest no distress ! 
Do I thus fail in tenderness ? 

'Tis so much joy to me denied. 
Give me the courage then myself to go ! 

Listen to reason ! Let my hand fall, dear ! 
'Tis twelve. The hamlet's all asleep, and lo, 

To-morrow'll soon be here ! 
Listen ! for though the night may have its pain 

The morning will be sweet, 

And our joy, when we meet, 
From joy remembered a new bliss will gain. 

And yet, 'tis ever sad to say good-night. 

I cannot choose but dream of thy return. 

Let us ere long that sorry word unlearn ! 
The lips of love pronounce it not aright. 



III. 
MOTHER AND MAIDEN. 

MAIDEN. 

Was that bright day &fete-&a.y, O my mother? 



MOTHER AND MAIDEN. 187 



MOTHER. 

What day ? Art thou asleep ? Speak, then, and tell 
me all! 

MAIDEN. 

When I recall it something seems my voice to smother ; 

I cannot talk, but straightway dreaming fall. 

Flowers bloomed that day unlike the old and sweeter ; 

Strange perfumes floated up from fields more green. 

And in a new, melodious metre, 

What choirs of birds did praise that beauty unforeseen ! 

The sun gave light too radiant to behold, 

Seemed in one strong embrace the heavens to hold, 

And all my life in wondrous hues to steep. 

MOTHER. 

If the day was so fine, why dost thou weep ? 
Why falls thy work out of thy idle hand ? 

MAIDEN. 

Ah, mother ! could I make thee understand 
Thou mightest help me, — but I do not dare, — 
Force me to speak or I shall die of care ! 

MOTHER. 

Speak then ! Mayhap thou meanest thy birthday ; 
It was the blessed Mother's fete as well. 

MAIDEN. 

No, then I wept for those with friends away, 
For Daphnis was yet absent from our dell. 



* 



iSS IDYLS. 



MOTHER. 

In all the landscape seest thou Daphnis only? 
He led his father's flocks to town erewhile. 
He hath forgot, I doubt, his cottage lonely. 

MAIDEN. 

Kb ! It is he who makes the sunshine smile ! 

MOTHER. 

I thought he woidd not come for six months yet. 

MAID EX. 

I feared so too, — but mother we have met. 

I was alone, — he also, — at our meeting 

He said " Good-morrow." Such a pleasant greeting ! 

MOTHER. 

And thou ? — 

MAIDEN. 

I said so too. His sire is good. 
Thou likest him well I ever understood. 

MOTHER. 

And the son? — 

MAIDEN. 

'Tis the father o'er again. 
But one thing gives this good old father pain : 
He has no daughter. " Flowers o' the home," says lie, 
"Are daughters." And he sighs and often kiss, s me. 



MOTHER AND MAIDEN. 1 89 



And the son ? — 

MAIDEN. 

Says that absence tortureth : 
Do I not know it ? wearies one to death ; 
Says that it keeps one sighing all day long, 
And brings the tears when one essays a song. 
" I made a garland once when I was sad : 
Wilt thou accept it withered ? " said the lad. 
Then, as I felt it on my forehead fall, 
My eyes grew dim. His voice is very kindly, 
And one hears best, methinks, when one hears blindly, 
And I so long had heard that sweet voice not at all. 



What else ? 



That something whispers in his ear 
That he should quit vain pomp for rural peace ; 
Dances at eve, gay songs, and revelries, 
And for my voice he ever longs to hear. 
His father also fain would win him home. 
"But what," he whispers, "will of me become? 
My sire knows well the love I bear to thee, 
But I, — I know not if thou lovest me." 
Then felt I, I must fly ! Mother, I durst 
Not own my love till I had told thee first! 



I90 IDYLS. 



MOTHER. 
And thou didst leave him? 

MAIDEN. 

Oh, I was afraid : 
I could not run ; 'twas joy my steps that stayed, 
So I kept lingering. 

MOTHER. 

And thou answeredst, — what? 



Mother, I onty listened and said naught. 
Since then I wait at home, — my secret to confess, — 
And Daphnis waits for me, and I am vexed to tears : 
I cannot tell thee it appears. 
And thou, — thou dost not guess ! 
Afraid alone, or when we are near each other, 
When will there come an end to all our woe? 
I dare not tell thee that I love him, mother. 

MOTHER. 

Ah, well ! But thou mayst tell thy Daphnis so ! 



PRESENTIMENT. 1 9 1 



ELEGIES. 



1. 

PRESENTIMENT. 

Ah, no ! It is not all delusion, — 

That strange intelligence of sorrow, 
Searching with light the tranquil heart's seclusion, 

Making us quail before the unknown morrow, — 
'Tis the farewell of happiness departing, 

A sudden tremor in a soul at rest, 
The wraith of coming time, upstarting 

Within the watchful breast. 

I know thy power, dark presage of event, 
Who can resist thy nameless, formless woe ? 
Even as a child thou madest my tears flow, 

And sentest laughter into banishment ! 

Oh, yes ! Thou earnest shadow-veiled one day, — 

It seems the loveliest of all my spring, — 

In sombre mists enveloping 
My visions of the fair and far away. 

For I was drunk with a most innocent gladness, 
Life glowed with vivid hues ; I had a throng 

Of mates who shared my mood of merry madness, 
The dance, the flowers, the laughter, and the song. 



192 ELEGIES. 

Thus, with my playmates \o\ 
The pleasant fields a-roving, 
Filling the air with merriment, 
Whal pang through all my being went? 
As linnets in spring weather 
Come flocking o'er the heather, 

So hail the bright days and the warm, 
Gathered again our happy .-warm. 
And bo it was, the mirth being very wild, 
Si 11 Men I felt my gayety decline ; 
I knew not if the fault were mine, 
But weep I must, — poor child ! — 
And home with faltering steps and slow ; 
The sunset fire was fading in the west : 
The sun seemed sad at going to his rest ; 
The games went on. 1 could not join them now. 

One little month, and still the flowers were brave, 
lhit not for these I sought that spot again. 
Death had revealed the secret of my pain; 

I was alone beside inv mother's -rave 1 



II. 

THE LOST CHILD. 

Young and old were out together, bright hues with 
sombre blent. 
For the Virgin of the harvest had received her leafy 
crown. 



* 



THE LOST CHILD. 1 93 

There were chains of garlands all the way from the 
hamlet to the town, 
And o'er a happy vintage laughed the elders well content ; 
Till a something checked the glee 
As a will-o'-the-wisp will darken while it glows, 
And a cry went up that froze 

Even the merry maidens' minstrelsy. 
" Has any seen a little child astray among the crowd ? 
The mother has been seeking it, and weeping long and 
loud. 

" Now her fear is grown so great, she can no longer 
call, 
And an awful silence follows her outcry of distress, 
Nor can he tell, the poor baby, of his own unhappiness. 
He has but a single word, — says ' mother,' — that is 
ah! 

Has no one then a tongue ? 
Did no one see him playing on the brink ? 

A tender child and young 
Beside the deep Rhone playing ? Pause and think ! 
Oh, has any seen a little child astray amid the crowd ? 
The mother has been seeking it, and weeping long and 
loud. 

" His flossy curls are yellow, the hue of ripened wheat, 
And his gentle eyes are black, and his tiny teeth yet 

growing, 
And he wavers in his walk, as one unused to going, 
13 



194 ELEGIES. 



And they have decked his little gown with bluets all so 

sweet ; 
Bui naked you may find him, 

For the very poor will even rob a cliild. 

You would know the cherub mild, 

Weeping ever as he strays with none to mind him. 

Oh, has any seen a little cliild astray amid the crowd ? 

The mother has been seeking it, and weeping long and 

loud." 

Long the old crier paused, an answering word to hear, 
But of all the mournful throng, not one could aid his 

quest ; 
Every mother folded tighter the babe upon her breast, 
And the autumn night was haunted by an unspoken fear. 
A vagrant, some averred. 
Crept shyly by in frightful tatters clad, 

And an infant's cry was heard 
Uplifted, in the darkness, weak and sad. 
" Has any seen a little child astray amid the crowd ? 
The mother has been seeking it, and weeping long and 
loud." 



Ever the good old crier told his story 

Of that poor babe astray by the great stream. 

Once even a veteran soldier, mailed in glory, 
Wept underneath his helmet, hearing him. 



*- 



THE LOST CHILD. 1 95 

Till now no more the clays were warm and splendid, 

The vineyards leafy, and the blossoms fair, 
But "Winter, by his long, slow nights attended, 

Had come, and gloom and pallor everywhere. 
That piteous voice was hushed among the others ; 

It woke no tidings of the little one ; 
Only his memory wrung the hearts of mothers, 

A portent sad and strange to think upon. 

But she whom spent with sorrow and as dying, 

They bore at even from the field away ; 
She lived with memory broken like her crying, 

Taking no thought for that distressful day. 
The harvest and the shore of the swift river 

Had vanished from her brain confused and wild ; 
Turbid her thoughts as brooks are ever 

Whose fountains are defiled. 

Unmoved she sought again her lowly dwelling, 

A great crowd following her, 
Tumult of cries and sobs around her swelling, 

But she had not a tear. 
Sure, her long madness was God's blessing ; 

" My boy's asleep ! " she smiled, 
And ever made as though caressing 

Softly the missing child. 

In the brief nights an empty cradle swinging, 

She murmured, " Oh, how blessed we mothers are ! " 



196 ELEGIES. 



She only, witless of her loss, was bringing 

Calmly to God her simple, thankful prayer. 
Within the curtain she had drawn so lightly, 

Sin- heard a slumberous breathing, soft and low, 
And who would undeceive her ? Therefore nightly 

She watched and waited for the waking so. 
Nay, lift it not, the kindly curtain, 

So like the veil over her memory shed ! 
Lives the child yet ? Then lost and lorn 'tis certain, 

While prayer and song circle his empty bed. 

Pensive by day, and scarce a look addressing 

To those she once had known ; 
And ever to her heart the phantom pressing. 

And crooning in low tone ; 
But peace aye came with nightfall, when she lingered 

Loose-clad the low fire by, 
Watching intent, while she the cradle fingered, 

The clouds career the sky. 

One moonless night a great wind was abroad 

The air with tumult filling, 
Till, by the strife the senses overawed, 

Owned a mute fear unwilling. 
Lights glimmered faintly in the cottage pane, 
Baying of dogs was fearsome in the rain. 

The swollen stream swept down the uprooted tree, 
But on the watcher there was wrought a charm. 

She slept, though the veiled eyes yet seemed to see, 
The cradle stayed under the wasted arm. 



THE LOST CHILD. 197 

Hush, now ! 'Tis the first time since the dark hour 

When memory was o'erthrown. 
And stricken to the earth we saw her cower, 

Speech, tears, and memory gone. 
But the storm wherewith nature travaileth, 

Wroth at her long delusion, 

Pierces her sleep's delusion 
And wakes her to the bitterness of death. 

Forcing a cry unheard for many a day, — 

" Has no one seen a little child astray ? " 
As echo answers quick, a voice of terror, 

Reviving reason took the alarm and cried : 
" Give me my child ! " Oh, cruel error ! 

She sees the cradle now, and sees it void. 

Pale, voiceless, tearless, for a little space, 

She having met and striven 
With her great anguish, hid her face. 

" I see the earth. I have lost heaven ! 
Oh, God of mothers, does he live ? " she cried, 
" Then take me some whither, my footsteps guide ! 

He is not here, and here I cannot stay ! 

And, since Death has not found me ere to-day, 
I will go forth and seek him up and clown ! " 

Next morn they traced her footsteps in the snow ; 

Noiseless those feeble steps ; none saw her go ; 
She was away, alone. 

God only knew the desert way she went. 
• At least the storm was well-nigh spent. 



198 ELEGIES. 



She murmured going : " Once more I would see 
The chapel which at harvest-tide I decked, 
Where the dear child, — oh, precious hope all 
wrecked, — 

Tried, when I sang, himself to sing with me. 
I'll take his cradle for an offering ; 

It wrings my heart, and now he needs it not ; 

'Tis like his grave, — and, in my mourning thought, 
His little image to my God I'll bring ! 

Flowers have I none, and short the time, 'tis clear ; 
How can one live when hope is dead ? 

But shoidd I last until the spring is here, 
Here I will hide my head." 

And so the pious priest who knew her fate, 
Willing the little couch to consecrate, 

Received it ; while another woman dressed 
In vagrant's rags, crept near and whispered wild, 
" Give it to me ! " and pointed to a child 

Hid in the shapeless tatters on her breast. 
.Said the bereaved one: " Do not be afraid ! 

You have a child there. You are very poor, 

But we will aid your misery, be sure ! 
I am dying because I have none ! " she said. 

A sweet, shrill cry broke on her bitter wail : 
The heap moved, and a little voice said. " Mother ! " 
Frantic she snatched her burden from the other, 

Who scarce resisted, — guilty one ! — but pale. 



THE LOST CHILD. 



199 



Fled, plunged adown the hillside at that word, 
And vanished like some dark and evil bird ; 
While the true mother tore the rags aside, 
Her sad eyes flamed like torches, and she cried : 
" It is my child ! But oh, how pale he is ! " 
Then sank as overpowered by so much bliss. 
It seems that we were born for misery, 
And when we are too happy, can but die. 

But the child fondles her, prattles and weeps, 
And kisses back the soul upon her lips, 
And seems to tremble yet for that old fright. 
So she must screen his form so frail and light, 
Weeping, " Fear not ! 'Tis mother, little one ! 
Oh, father, see you not this is my son ! 
'Tis not the mocking phantom any more ! 
It is my boy who loves me, whom I bore ! " 
And when he saw her thus, and heard her speak, 
The good man felt the tears upon his cheek. 

She told it all again, her tale being broken 
By choking sobs, in words of fire, — 

Only her vow of vengeance died unspoken, — 
Having her child what more can she desire ? 

" Doubtless he suffered sorely, but he lives ! " 

The mother weeps, and fondles, and forgives. 



. 



ELEGIES. 



THE FIRST IMPRISONMENT OF BERANGER. 

What? Beranger, the steadfast friend of France; 

The gay Anacreon of our gloomy days ? 
Whose ringing lyre, brave words, and fiery glance, 

Upbore the very hopes of youth. Who says 
That he is captive ? Fold thy iris-wing. 

Thou who shouldst bear the poet's coronal ! 
Thou who art free as air, beautiful Spring! 

Hark to his chains, and let thy blossoms fall ! 
In vain the nymph and the returning bee 

Visit the silent threshold of their friend. 
The flowers his kiss hath waked are fair to see, 

Yet mourns the blooming laud from end to end! 

He is a captive. Hide your brows for shame, 

O muses ! for they chained him at your feet. 

Weep for his absence, children ! It is meet ! 
He sings but under guard I And who will name 

His crime? Who dreams the noble rage he spent, 
The ardent vows that none dared breathe but he, 
That won a smile from very misery 

Wire but the veils of treacherous intent ? 
His merry hear! proclaims him innocenl ; 

A sweet soul breathes in his melodious rhyme, 
The burning chords of bis fine instrument 

Will echo grandly in all coming time. 



FIRST IMPRISONMENT OF BERA NGER. 2 O I 

At the tribunal of posterity 

His free strains, fraught with love, will soar, will 
sing. 
" There was a soul," the verdict then shall be, 

" Both wise and soft to human suffering ! " 

For I have seen the wanderers who pine, 

River of exile ! on thy farther shore, — 
And seen the muse with prophecy divine 

Visit them there and kindle hope once more. 
They shared the rapture of her buoyant flight ; 

Their homesick hearts were lightened far away, 
For on her wing, with scattered tear-drops bright, 

She carried them the songs of Beranger ! 

And, as they listened, in their eager eyes 

The light of a lost heaven did reappear. 
They kissed each other in a glad surprise ; 

A ray of laughter shone in every tear ! 
Only the aged exile — he whose weak 

And tremulous footsteps neared their final goal — 
Murmured " Farewell ! " in plaintive tones and weak, 

" I shall not see thee more, compassionate soul ! " 

Such was his crime, judges of the land ! 

He freely gave out of his poor possessions ; 
He strove to lighten lonely sorrow, and 

His tears of sympathy ye made transgressions. 



202 ELEGIES. 



If none may over read his lines unmoved, 

Console yourselves ! His like we shall not see ! 
But he is poor; leave him his lyre beloved, 

And let him sing ! for sad he well may be. 

Not as you deem them are his thoughts profound : 
The reprobate by his own voice is daunted. 

But God said " Seek ! " and this man glory found ; 
"Sing!" and the laws divine he straightway 
chanted. 

What a dread silence follows on my plaint. 
So like the vain lamenting of the deep ! 

Methinks Time is himself benumbed to faint, 
And, poppy-crowned, has fallen quite asleep. 

But hark ! Is that a cry of joy I hear? 

Is there a God will send us help at need ? 
" Free ! " did you say ? Oh, answer, comrades dear '. 

Free ? Is he free ? Then I may weep indeed ! 

Thanks, noisy rumor ! Not alone of ill, 

But now of sweetest good thy voire hath spoken. 

My charmed car let the glad tidings till ; 

Repeat the word, — the poet's chains are broken ! 

Oh, joy to all ! And let all labor cease, 
And everywhere proclaim a holiday ! 

A happy truce to our long miseries ! 

And we will fling our cypress far away. 



FLOWERS AT THE CROSS. 203 

O my companions, life is pleasant yet, 

And dear ! and dear the laughing fields of Spring. 
On brows unstained rose-garlands are well set. 

Dance, nymphs ! and wide your vernal blossoms 
fling! 



FLOWERS AT THE CROSS. 

"Whexce came these flowers forgotten on the stone, 

And wet with evening dew or tears are they ? 

Fell they from folded hands ? or were they thrown 

Aside by village children in their play ? 

Mayhap some homesick traveller left them here, 
Pausing beside the cross for brief repose ; 

A prodigal o'erwhelmed by memories dear, 
Vowed to their stainless white this pallid rose. 

For still the mother-soul attends the child, 

And still friend yearns for friend in dream or prayer, 

And he who left this token hath beguiled 

His pain by thoughts of God's love everywhere. 

O my poor flowers ! how sad is all your grace ! 

How keen with fond regret your perfumes rise ! 
Some lover's dream hath left this plaintive trace ; 

Oft in a flower love's secret hidden lies. 



20.J. POEMS. 



Have I not too refreshed our Lady's feet 
With tin- white lilacs that I love so well? 

She knew for whom I brought the offering sweet. 
She ever knows the thought we may not tell. 



WHAT HAST THOU DONE WITH THESE?' 

I gave my heart to thee ; 

Thou gavest me thine. 
Heart for heart, — could there be 
A sweeter guaranty ? 



Now thine is given back, 

And lost is mine. 
Now thine is given back ; 
Therefore a heart I lack. 



Green leaf and blossom too ; 

Fruit worth the seeing ; 
Green leaf and blossom too ; 
Perfume and lovely hue. 

What bast thou done with these. 

King of my being? 
What bast thou done with these, • 
The treasures of my peace ? 



WHAT HAST THOU DONE WITH THESE. 205 

Like »a poor, hapless child, 

Mother-forsaken ; 
Like a poor hapless child 
Unguarded in the wild, — 

Thou leavedst me alone, 

No hand to beckon ! 
Leavedst me all alone, 
But for God looking on. 

Yet shall there come an hour, — 

I see it plainly, — 
A late and lonely hour, 
Love reasserts his power. 

On me — even on me — 
Thou shalt call vainly 
On me — even on me — ■ 
Sadly and tenderly. 

Dreaming thou wilt return 

To my poor dwelling. 
Dreaming thou wilt return ; 
For the old greeting yearn. 

" She ? She is dead lang syne." 

Answer repelling ! 
Who'll heed that thou dost pine 
For one who died lang syne ? 



2o6 



LULLABY. 

Sleep, dear ! and thou wilt see 

The busy, happy bee, 
Dancing between the earth and sky, 
After his honey is all put by ! 

Sleep, clear ! For, only think ! 

An angel clad in pink, 
Who never goes flying in broad daylight. 
Will come and murmur a sweet good-night ! 

And be thou a good child ! 

Then, o'er thy forehead mild, 
Our Lady will lean, and to thee alone 
Tell a long story in undertone ! 

Thy mother mind alwav ! 

Then God himself will say : 
" I love the child just falling asleep ; 
Give him a golden dream to keep ! 

" Close, angel, his eyes lightly. 

And tinge thou his prayers brightly ! 
The hues of ray own garden-bed 
Over his orisons be shed ! 

"The little couch bend over. 
And 'broider well the cover, 
And freely about the pillow fling 
SiMu of down from thine own white wine! 



LULLABY. 



107 



" Give him the wings of a dove, 

That he may soar above, 
And in the sunshine of heaven play, 
Till the dawn of another earthly day ! 

" Or he may ride aloft 

Upon a cloudlet soft, 
And where with milk my fountains run, 
Give thou a drink to the little one ! 

" Open for him the chamber 
All bright with pearls and amber, 
And let him taste, before he wakes, 
Our precious little diamond cakes ! 

" Then shalt thou take a boat, 

And set the child afloat 
Upon my beauteous azure sea, 
Star-wrought the heavenly sail shall be. 

" The moon will soon be lighting 

The ripple so inviting ; 
And he shall lure from out the wave 
The finest silver fish I have ! 



" But then it is my will, 
The little one lie still, — 
Still as the birds are when they dream, 
In their reed houses by the stream. 



1\ WMS. 



" For if he weep and wail. 

The clock will tell the tale : 
• This is the naughty little lad 
"Who cried when the good God forbade ! ' 

" And echo from the street 

The story will repeat, 
Or ever the pealing tones have died, 
' This is the little man who cried ! ' 

" Heavy and sad at heart, 

Mother will sit apart. 
And all her beautiful songs forget, 
Because her nursling will storm and fret ! 

" Now what if he were borne 

Away in the angry morn ? 
What if the wilful little lamb 
Never more to his mother came ? 

" Lonely the world would be, 

To such a waif as he, 
And the child who storms and sighs and cries 
Cannot enter my Paradise ! " 

Ah, but he will be mild. 

And o'er the docile child 
Our Lady will lean, and to him alone, 
Tell a long tale in an undertone. 



* 



— — ^ 

THE WAYSIDE MADONNA. 209 

THE WAYSIDE MADONNA. 

(To my Daughters.) 

Our steadfast Lady sunders, 

With her uplifted hand, 
The heaven's muttered thunders 

From the harvest of the land. 
Amid the wayside grasses, 

No church, no shrine hath she, 
But still from him who passes 

Wards all calamity. 

Where high the hawthorn towers, 

For palace answering, 
Mid lofty, leafy bowers, 

The birds a matin sing. 
The children of the villagers 

Are her glad angels ever, 
And breeze that sighs, and leaf that stirs, 

Her Angelus deliver. 

Her kind eye speaks assurance 

To every contrite breast ; 
The blind, in their dark durance, 

On her sweet stillness rest. 
Once, by a poor wayfarer, 

In a lone valley found ; 
Now of God's gift the bearer 

To all the poor around. 
14 



2IO POEMS. 

Then, in her voiceless charity, 
My darlings aye confide ! 

For less than true will sometimes be, 

The truest friend heside. 
Within her pure seclusion 

The tender secret set, 
High above earth's delusion, 

And safe from all regret. 

When at her feet so queenly, 

I have laid my burning brow, 
How slowly and serenely 

Rest through my frame would flow ! 
Go to the heavenly Mother, 

And on her love rely ! 
So sweetly can none other 

Uplift you, — no, not I ! 

THE SAILOR'S RETURN. 

" Little ones ! your eyes are bright ! 
Look, for a sail should glimmer white 
Between the stormy sea and sky. 
The linen of that sail span I, 
And, if my dream be not belied, 
It will return ere winter-tide!" 

" From yon bare rock, a moment back, 
We saw amid the Hying nick. 

* 



THE SAILORS RETURN. 



"* 



211 



Below, along the breakers cast, 
A swaying sail without a mast ! " 

" O sailors' children, shout ! " cried she ; 
" Your sires are now upon the sea ; 
Divide the storm with voices shrill ! 
Shout ! little ones, with all your will ! 
And ah ! — when shines the lightning, note, - 
Is the tricolor still afloat ? " 

" We climb the rock, we watch, we hark, 
And now the lightning rends the dark ! 
And now we see a floating deck, 
And one who kneels upon the wreck ! " 

" Is it my Jamie brave ? " she wept ; 

" Last night he sought me when I slept ! 

"Wild was the dream ! Oh, come with speed, 

And seek and aid a soul at need ! 

I have wept so much my eyes are dim ; 

Only in heaven shall I see him ! " 

" Oh, horrible ! The thunder-shock 
Has flung him on the naked rock. 
If lingers yet his tortured breath, 
Now must we help him to his death ! " 



They came, — the sailors' children brave ; 
They drew poor Jamie from the wave, 



POEMS. 



And to the stricken bride they bare, 
Who touched his hand as he lay there, 
And found upon the finger cold 
Her own love-gift, — a ring of gold. 

Now are they wed for evermore. 
They sleep together on the shore ; 
The flying rack alarms them not ; 
Their evil days are long forgot. 



A WOMAN'S DREAM. 

" Wilt thou begin thy life again, 

O woman of the whitening hair ! 
Become a child, with shining train 

Of angel children in the air ? 
Wilt feel thy mother's kisses press ; 

Thou cradled warmly at her feet ? " 
" What ? — find my vanished Eden ? Yes 

Ah, yes, my God ! It was so sweet ! " 

" Wilt thou in blissful faith resume 

Thy sire's fond shelter as of old, 
While, breathing innocent perfume, 

The white flowers of thy heart unfold ? 
Back to thy vernal happiness 

Fly like a bird on pinions fleet?" 
"Might luit that joy continue, — yes, 

Ah yes, my God ! It was so sweet ! " 



TRISTESSE. 



213 



" Wilt thou unlearn thy sorry lore, 

And shyly peep life's leaves between, 
And, feeding youngest hopes once more, 

Forget the winters thou hast seen ? 
The daisied banks, the dove of peace, 

The morning freshness round thy track ; 
Shall these return ? " " My God, ah yes ! 

All but the wayside graves give back ! " 



" Have then thy wish ! Thy steps retrace ! 

Flowers, perfume, song, be thine once more ! 
Yet shall time lead thee to the place 

Of tears as surely as before. 
Eekindle passion's fires and view 

Their ever baleful radiance ! " 
" What, light those earth-born flames anew ? 

Ah no, my Saviour ! Take me hence ! " 



TRISTESSE. 



Shall I never play again in my mother's garden-close ? 
Nor fling me down to rest on the graves with blos- 
soms gay ? 
Shall the thought be aye so bitter of the happy time ? 

Who knows? 
And when I murmur fondly of idle times like those, 
Why does my voice in weeping die away ? 



2 1 4 POEMS. 



Methinks I know in part. Oh dear, oh lair the Bight 

Of the early, downy fruits that ahove the cradle grow ! 
To these the soul will turn, — bathe in the fountain 

bright 
Of the stream that strayed so far, and the virginal de- 
light 
But pauses, for she fears to foul it so. 

For she fears to stir the deeps of memory at rest, 

To search the heart's old wounds until they bleed 
afresh ; 
To wake the sense of wrong that slumbered in the 

breast ; 
Forgot and put away by time's and heaven's behest, 
Though the stinging barb, lay buried in the flesh ! 

For hast thou never gazed upon the mocking flame 
Of a memory very sore till thy cheeks were burning 
red? 
Or marked how to thy ear from time to time there came 
The clear and cruel echo of some abhorr'd name, 
Till the hunted heart toward the future fled ? 

Thou, too, my early home! Hovers my heart in vain 

About thy Gothic towers, for altered is the spot. 
Retracing, in a dream, the story of her pain. 
She sees them where they rise, but the charm lives not 
again, 
That clad with careless grace my mother's cot. 



TRISTESSE. 215 



There is riot of gay flowers in the churchyard's narrow 
space, 
Where I used to kneel and pray till the moonbeams 
touched the wall ; 
And the lusty vines have spread, where, on the tomb- 
stone's face, 
Heir of the lowly dead, the legend I would trace 
Of the great, — the last reunion of us all. 

Sad, sad ! — to come again when all the years are 
flown, 

And heartsick tell my tale, and reunite the link 
That bound me to these graves. Nor dare to call my own, 
Even some heart at rest beneath yon cross, o'erthrown 

And bruised ! — this is woe, dost thou not think ? 

But the little maid who sports and sleeps and knows no 
fret ; 
Who pranks herself with flowers, and has a heart so 
high; 
The poor, light-hearted maid whom no one envies yet ; 
Who trusts the unknown life, though born for all re- 
gret, — 
O'er her I needs must yearn, for it was I. 

When I fain would find a smile in this grim life-book 
of mine, 
I turn the white first page, and the token I discover. 



* 



2l6 POEMS. 



Unfinished are the words, but their meaning I divine. 
Guileless are they and sweet, and oh, how bright they 
shine 
Amid leaves with sorrow darkly written over ! 

A cherry on the bough, or an apple barely grown, 
Were glorious dainties then. Ah, when the soul is 
young, 
It is lightly filled with joy, and the taste is yet unknown 
Of the morsel steeped in tears, with honey overstrown, 
That leaves a bitter savor on the tongue. 

Amid the lost delights for which I vainly sigh, 

How did they call the flower, — the azure flower and 
brave 
That used to ope at dawn, then droop and close i 
And ere another morning had vanished utterly ; 
Will it not bloom again upon my grave ? 

Dear church ! no priest was thine, no service and no 
state ! 

My childish treble rang adown thy empty aisle ! 
Around thy every window the bramble waved elate, 
And the mutilated Christ looked down compassionate. 

Shall I ever dream of heaven as there, erewhile ? 

Is it uprooted now, the wayward, wealthy vine. 

The ancient wall that curtained with laee-work green 
and gay; 



* 



TRISTESSE. 



217 



Its humble arms enfolded the desecrated shrine ; 
Like wings of pitying angels the boughs did wave and 
shine, 
And a single bird swung on a golden spray. 

And the bird sang ; and he tasted the ripe clusters, and 
his wing 

Upon the sombre ogive a gentle measure beat, 
Till the low descending sun his fiery darts would fling, 
Kindling all the shattered panes with a red illumining 

That long my dazzled eyeballs did repeat. 

Thou, also, Notre Dame. Thy pomp is long restored ; 

But silent wast thou then, as thou wouldst a secret 

keep ; [soared 

None woke thy organ-keys, — but my voice arose and 

And through the echoing nave its utmost rapture poured. 

Didst thou hear the slender Ave in thy sleep ? 

Never to see again my Lord depicted there 

So clear to virgin faith on the sun-lighted wall ? 
Lay my morsel at his feet, and offer up my prayer, 
Then track my forecast shadow along the river fair 
To the ivied cot my home I used to call ! 

Nor the deep, mysterious well, — an urn set in the wild, 
That held, methought, the ashes of the departed sun ? 

Its wave became a mirror to every passing child. 

It is turbid now, alas ! — and all things are defiled : 
In this, that water and my life are one. 



2 1 8 POEMS. 



Nor pass the rustic school, and hark the humming noise, 
WJii-iv -ivw my caged soul, and my spirits worked 
like wine ; 
Where, captive at my desk, I heard a ringing voice 
That called me forth from prison and bade my heart 
rejoice. 
Dear voice ! Art thou yet calling, father mine ? 

So suddenly set free, I was pale with rapture sweet ; 
Methought that heaven had opened and earth had 
grown more wide. 
Did my father know afar how I pined in my retreat ? 
Oh, proud I held his hand as we passed adown the 
street ! 
He was like God, and I was satisfied. 

On to the flower-grown cross ! And still the sun was 
high ; 
And Albertine was there, and her curls were flowing 
free. 
" Oh, is it then a fete?" was my ecstatic cry ; 
" Is it to-morrow then the good God passes by ? " 
And she answered, " Thou wilt see ! thou wilt see ! " 

It was a fete indeed ! Oh, merrily we strove ; 

We flung our flowers aloft, our darling laughing so 
To feel the odorous rain fall on her from above : 
For she was living then, and all my life was love J 

But the rose waits not the winter, as we know. 



►F — 

TO M. ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE. 219 

Oh, but to stray again in my mother's garden-close ! 
To rest a little while on the graves with blossoms 

gay! 
Why are our joys remembered more bitter than our 

woes ? 
And when I murmur fondly of idle times like those, 
Why does my voice in weeping die away ? 

TO ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE. 

"'' Rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that 
weep." 

Hopeless and heartless on the shore, 

Beside the melancholy main ; 
I envied birds that freely soar, 
And cries along the tempest pour, 

While I my anguish must contain. 

How many hours and months of woe 
Went seaward with the falling tide ! 

I drew a sombre veil, as though 

I best might bear my burden so, 
And my lost love securely hide. 

And, in the depth of my despair, 

I knelt and murmured dreamily, 
Because I had not breath for prayer : " 
" My God, my Father, art thou there ? 
Or hast thou quite forgotten me ? 



220 



POEMS. 



"For our tosl bark, nor truce from war, 
Nor tranquil sea, nor loosened -train. 
Now stranded on the dreary bar, — 
Now lifted high and swept afar. 

Foundered in storm or captive ta'en. 

" Mothers with loss infuriate. — 

To such, death is an awful tiling ! 
To me, it was a barbarous Fate, — 
Fantastic, faithless, — could create 
My darlings but for suffering ! 

" I wonder who will take the oar 

When my poor bark at last is found 
Untenanted upon the shore, 
Laden with my light weight no more, 
On ever darker voyages bound ! 

" Unhelped of priest, they'll bear me yet 

Unto the churchyard piously. 
And some sweet soul a prayer repeat, 
And ivy plant and box- wood set 
For a memorial over me." 



But nothing lasts. The storm passed on. 
The wild birds with it. — and at night 

I sat beside my casement lone 

And watched the rising moon, that shone 
With a sofl radiance and while. 



TO M. ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE. 221 

I stretched my arms without a word, 

As to the sweetest friend "I had, 
Whose gracious footfall long deferred 
The quick heart suddenly had heard 

Upon its threshold, and was glad. 

And heard a voice I had not known, — 

My breath came fast, my speech was broken, — 

A lofty voice, yet sweet of tone, 

That thrilled my spirit overthrown 

As though my God himself had spoken. 

But all too weak for hope was I, 

Therefore I hid my weeping eyes 
And onty murmured piteously. 
" When all forget and pass me by, 

What angel seeks me from the skies ? " 

'Twas thou ! I heard thy wings of might 

Beat midway of the brightening air. 
Thou earnest dazzling to the sight 
Adown a path built all of light, 

Angel of mine ! to seek me there ! 

From his high station, Lamartine 

Pronounced my name. Ah, even thus 
To save a bark the shoals between, 
The good God, from his throne unseen, 
Flings out a sun-ray beauteous ! 



POEMS. 



Sweet as forgiveness whispered low, 
E'er since thy breath, with healing rife, 

Has touched my pale and crownless brow, 

A sacred pity seems to flow 
Around my desolated life. 

The Peri, on her eager quest, 

Bore never to the gates Elysian 
A tear more humble at the best 
Than that, — my warmest, happiest, 

"With which thy songs have dimmed my vision. 

But in the minstrelsy sublime 

And sweet, my heart has ne'er forgot 

(Sweeter to think than read that rhyme) 

Thou saidest " glory " many a time, 
A word whose meaning I know not. 

Only a woman, with no higher 

Or deeper lore than love and tears ! 

Whose heart has been her only lyre, 

And thou alone dost guess the fire, 
The dying fire her bosom bears ! 

Before those lofty hymns of thine, 

Angelic, all ! and human both, 
This rude, imperfect harp of mine, 
And long unstrung and mute, doth pine ; 

To try a single measure loth. 



TO MME. DESBORDES-VALMORE. 



223 



Only a hungry gleaner, I, 

Who fain would her poor sheaf complete 
With scattered ears. Then suddenly 
Shone thy resplendent charity, 

And poured a harvest at my feet. 

My name had died before me. Spake 

Thy voice alone: " Is not she living? " 
So one day may a swallow break 
The silence, and the echoes wake 

Above my grave with tuneful grieving. 

Thy shield with fairest flowers is gay. 

Yet own the truth, I fain would know it, - 
Has thy unclouded glory's ray 
Had sovereign power the tears to stay 

That gathered in thy eyes, my poet ? 



TO MIME. DESBORDES-VALMORE. 

BY ALPHOXSE DE LAMAETINE. 1 

Oft have I seen upon the deep, 

Where swoops the storm on wings of flame, 
Some gallant craft before me sweep, — 
The strong masts bend, the billows leap, — 

For her their fury is but game. 

1 The reader should remember that in order of time this poem 
preceded the last. (Tr.) 



224 



POEMS. 



She courts their buffeting alway. 

Filled are the sails that wide expand ; 
Like feelers fine the sail-yards play, 
And balance on the desert gray ; 

The decks by lusty seamen manned. 

Low at the port the surges grind, 

But vainly strive to enter it ; 
The good ship flings their spray behind, 
As a fleet courser sows the wind 

"With the white foam from off his bit. 

" Long may she ride the waves ! " I cry, 
And while I speak she springs afar ! 

Let but the clouds forsake the sky, 

And vast as all immensity 
The limits of her empire are ! 

But sometimes, too, I've seen unfurled 
One timid sail the seas to roam. 

Each billow o'er the skiff was hurled. 

The fisher had in all the world 
Only this humble, floating home. 

Watching till eve obscured the deep, 

This poor bark's fate, I made it mine, 
And, haply, from the shoals to* keep. 
For her I prayed the winds to sleep, 
And prayed for her the moon to shine. 



TO MME. DESBORDES-VALMORE. 225 

The storm had sadly marred her sail, 

Shredding in tatters every fold. 
The mast, the rigging, ah, how frail ! 
Yet had my bark withstood the gale, 

Nor parted where she wildly rolled. 

Alert the father stood to guide 

The furrowing keel along the water ; 

The son wrought bravely at his side. 

At rents in sail or net there plied 

Her needle fast, the willing daughter. 

Before the hearth knelt children twain, 
And strove to wake the morning's ashes 

For supper service, nor in vain. 

Gayly they saw the redness gain, 

Till sprang aloft the pale, blue flashes. 

While, clasping fast the swaying mast, 
Behold the mother toward them leaning, 

Nursing the babe, whose arms are cast 

About her neck, and from the blast 
The dubious flame securely screening. 

" And this ! " I sighed, " is then their all ! 

This cabin-home ! These little lives ! 
Their country sure they cannot call 
Shores where their feet will never fall, 

A land from her embrace that drives ! " 
15 



226 



POEMS. 



^ 



What though there lie a shining crown 

Of towers and gardens round the bay ? 
Far from the beach their anchor's thrown, 
Linked to the storm-worn ring alone 
Of mole abandoned to decay. 

Their wealth how poor ! their joys how pale ! 

The burden of the songs they sing, 
The breath of God to fill their sail, 
Its friendly shelter from the gale, 

And what their nets are gathering. 

And this frail bark, my poor Yalmore, 

Becomes the image of thy fate ! 
From morn to morn still driven o'er 
A dreary ocean without shore, 

And treacherous, and insatiate. 

Thou bringest clay for thy poor nest 

To tavern-eaves, and losest all, 
And then, bird forbidden rest ! 
From town to town thou gatherest 

The crumbs by stranger hands let fall. 



Thy young thou teachest festal airs, 

But oh, the sorrow in thy tone ! 
The pitying fowler hears and spares 
He will not lay his cruel snares, 
Alas ! until the wines are crown. 



t 



TO MME. DESBORDES-VALMORE. 227 

But thou hast made the bird-notes thine, 

And still melodious is thy plaint. 
And when the wintry winds combine 
To thrust from sheltering bough and vine, 

Thou singest on, — though sad, though faint. 

Behold, I show a mystery ! 

He who a perfect lyre has wrought, 
In sudden passion flings it by. 
Like shivered glass the fragments lie ; 

To him his tuneful work is naught. 

Yet comes the artist hand ere long 

The ravaged fragments to restore ; 
Awakes the interrupted song, 
And finds a tone more pure, more strong, 

In the rent harp-strings than before. 

Some notes the soul can ne'er attain, 
Till crushed the feet of Fate below ; 

Then shall she lift, amid her pain, 

For every wound a sweeter strain, 
A nobler chord for every blow. 

Then touch thy harp, and let it hide 

Thy weeping eyes, and wait the morrow. 
A poet well his hour may bide, 
And tears that Glory's hands have dried 
Soften the memory of sorrow ! 



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